Babbling About Brackets

Today was a super quiet day at work. My theory: everyone in the office is consumed with filling out their NCAA Tournament bracket! As usual, our office has a "fun and completely voluntary" contest to see who can make the most correct picks in the tourney. I always enter, but I have yet to win. In fact, I have yet to come even close to winning--last year I was in the running for dead last. I feel like I should be better at this practice considering I really am a college basketball fan. It galls me when people who are not into sports at all do better than me in the pool! UGH...idiots!

Clearly I'm competitive. I'm pretty sure I've filled out at least one bracket every year since 1992. That was the year I lived in the Jayhawk Towers, on a floor consisting entirely of my pledge sisters. We had an entire wall of one apartment covered with brackets from all 40 or so of us (cut out of the newspaper and filled in by hand, since very few of us actually had printers at that time). There was also an envelope stuck to the wall where we each put our $2 entry fee into the pool. Of course 99% of us probably picked KU to win it all, so when we lost in the second round of the tourney to UTEP, we were all completely crushed. In all seriousness, I laid on my bed and sobbed uncontrollably until my roommate Kelly came in and yelled at me to pull myself together. In our depressed state, we all wandered back to the bracket wall, took down our picks and took back our two dollars, because we just didn't care anymore.

For the next 10 years, I picked KU to win the Big Dance. Each year, I was terribly disappointed when they lost. Although I never broke down and sobbed like in 1992, I will admit that I shed tears for my beloved Jayhawks each time they got knocked out of the tourney. In 2003, I finally decided that I would quit getting my hopes up, and for the first time ever I decided not to pick KU to win. As you may remember, Roy's Boys made it all the way to the finals that year, which of course made me think that my disloyalty had actually helped them in the end. Despite my crazy theory, I couldn't continue the practice of not picking them because I felt so horrible and guilty for being a doubter--I'm not generally a "glass half empty" kind of person! So for the last three years I've done two brackets: one that's my dream of what I want to happen, and one that's my reality of what I think is slightly more likely. I can't decide if my dream this year is for KU to beat North Carolina in the finals, or if I should be hoping for UNC to embarrassingly get knocked out before the Final Four. Hmmmm...what would be the most humiliating for them...

Along with our respective office pools, Chad and I usually enter another pool organized every year by our friend Mike. We all pledge to send the winner $10 and then hardly anyone actually does, which I know because 7 or 8 years ago I actually did win the pool (don't be impressed, there were probably less than 10 people) and only got one check in the mail. This year we decided to go ahead and create our own pool so even more of our friends can get in on the action! If you want to join, create your bracket on ESPN.com and then add it to the group named 'Hawk Hopefuls. You don't even have to be a Jayhawk to participate, nor to you have to fork out any money--this one is only for bragging rights!

As you can see, I take my March Madness quite seriously, and I believe my seriousness is proof that I am quite mad. :)