On top of having my butt drop-kicked in the men’s NCAA
tournament office pool with the ladies of The Dispatch (aka The
Elite Eight), watching Kansas win a national championship is about
as close as it gets to adding insult to injury for this lowly
sportswriter.
On top of having my butt drop-kicked in the men’s NCAA tournament office pool with the ladies of The Dispatch (aka The Elite Eight), watching Kansas win a national championship is about as close as it gets to adding insult to injury for this lowly sportswriter.
It could only get worse if I broke a finger while typing this article.
There is one person and one team I freely admit to have hated in my time as a sports fan. The person was John Elway and the team was Kansas.
Growing up in Columbia, Missouri, I was a homegrown fan of Mizzou Tigers basketball and the Kansas City Chiefs. As many athletes will tell you – as will any diehard sports fans – it’s the agonizing defeats that stick with you the most.
I may have only gone to five or six Chiefs games in my life, but it seems like every one of them featured a comeback drive by Elway to win the game. When it came to college hoops, and I attended plenty of University of Missouri games, the most exciting contests always included the Kansas Jayhawks, and the games almost always featured Mizzou getting beat down.
So on Monday night, as I sat with several co-workers enjoying an incredible championship game at Stubby’s Sports Bar & Grill in Gilroy, a contest that looked all but over until Memphis’ fatal flaw, free-throw shooting, finally caught up with the Tigers (mascot coincidence, I think not), I couldn’t help but feel the game summed up my experience, in this experiment, in a nutshell.
I challenged a group of women that claimed to know nothing about basketball to an office pool and showed that any knowledge about the players and coaches involved was inconsequential. Marketing Director Nora Jones won the pool, slightly edging out Copy Desk Chief Andi Joseph.
I finished in fifth, showing that my knowledge of the programs taking part in the tournament was unnecessary, and part of the reason I lost.
Picking games in the Midwest Regional, I came up with several combinations of who would emerge to take part in the Final Four. None of them included Kansas.
Why? Because picking Kansas would go against everything I stand for as a sports fan. It would be like a Raiders fan wearing a Joe Montana jersey. It would be like a Yankees fan splitting a cab with a Red Sox fan after Game 7 in 2004. It would be like changing the spelling of my last name to make it easier for others to pronounce. I had to take a stand.
This could be why I’ve never won a March Madness office pool, but I refuse to pick a team that might end up putting me in the awkward position of cheering for my enemy. It’s the same as not starting a player going against your favorite team in fantasy football.
Looking at the results, however, it’s clear I wouldn’t have won the pool even if I had picked Kansas to win it all. The ladies were too smart, too savvy, too inexperienced. And now it’s too late for me to save face.
When March rolls around a year from now, maybe the tables would be turned if I asked the ladies to give it another go. Maybe it would be they who question and second-guess their every pick. Or, maybe I’d get my butt kicked again.
If that’s the case, you can bet I won’t be leaving my seat at Stubby’s to come back to the office to write a concession speech.
Final Standings:
1. Nora Jones- 81 points
2. Andi Joseph – 76 points
3. Hillary Rush – 69 points
4. Luz Cervantes – 64 points
5. Josh Koehn – 52 points
6. Miriam Quehl – 50 points
7. Kelly Sinon – 48 points
8. Christine McGinty – 37 points
9. Sara Suddes – 33 points
