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The 7 People who You Will Lose Your Bracket Pool To This Year

I saw this article on Rootzoo.com and was cracking up because it has happened to me almost like a leap year…

Anyway, I the story is below, but I wanted to highlight the author before the article. Click here for their link.

Introduction

It happens every year. You watch college basketball from Thanksgiving to Mardi Gras. You read every blog, know every stat and can name the 8th man on the 9th best team in the Horizon League, yet you never win your NCAA March Madness bracket pool. You always come away frustrated because your mom, Nancy from HR, Ted from Sales or one of these people beat you year after year:

Will you win or lose your bracket pool this year?

You may lose to one of these teams.

The woman who picks based on team colors

This person cannot tell the difference between Blake and Taylor Griffin, yet there red jerseys remind her of flowers so she picks them correctly in the Final Four. She hates orange because “my eyes never match anything I would wear that is orange”, so she always picks Syracuse to flame out in the first round. She eventually picks UNC to win the championship because “their blue color reminds me of, like, the sky and I, like, love to shop outside!” You find out she is ahead of you in the standings and pound your against your desk for a good twenty minutes.

The IT person who picks based on which mascot would win in a fight

While this person gets initially thrown off their strategy in the first round matchup between Davidson and Kentucky, they are back on track analyzing the strength of a panther versus the quickness of a Jayhawk. They spend too much time watching Animal face-off on Discovery and not enough time breaking down the penetrating offense of Memphis to be ahead of you in the standings. He teases you with questions like, “So is a Blue Devil a person or what?” Inevitably, they put the Panthers, Huskies, Demon Deacons and Golden Eagles in the Final Four and you realize all the time you spent listening to Hubert Davis was for naught. This makes you want to hunt down the nearest animal you can find and give it a good punt.

The HR employee who has their son or grandson fill out their bracket

Let’s face it; you are the most knowledgeable basketball fan in your office. You come in on Monday and ask your co-workers. “Did you see that Butler-Davidson game on Saturday?” This is usually met with a blank stare, “I was too busy catching up on Lost”, or “No, I was enjoying the outdoors.” What a bunch of losers, you think, and you are already spending the money you will pocket from your pool. However, the tournament rolls around and you realize that the nice old lady from HR is ahead of you and there is no way you can catch her. What is her secret? She more than likely had her son or grandson, who has the same lifestyle as you, fill out her bracket for her. She has an almost identical bracket to yours, with all the same teams in the Final Four and Championship. However, he was able to see that one Cinderella that you overlooked because he realized their three point shooting was deadly in stadiums that held more than 15,000 people, a stat you failed to overlook. You vow next year to break down every possible stat and get your revenge on that nice lady who validated your expense report last week.

The new dad whose newborn kid picks the winners

This is one of the worst because you are left with the realization that despite all the basketball you watched this season, you can’t even pick the winners better than an infant. This very happy dad puts the teams on separate pieces of paper and has their son/daughter pick the team out of the hat that he thinks will win. You laugh at his initial bracket because he has picked #16 South Alabama to beat #1 UNC in the first round. “I’m just in it for fun, my kid picked the winners”, retorts the happy father. You slyly walk back to your desk with a smile on your face that shows what a sucker you think this guy is. However, he gets the last laugh when you realize that lucky pick in 1993 of #15 Santa Clara over #2 Arizona killed your Final Four, while he is laughing all the way to the bank to deposit that money in his kid’s college account all while saying “I never watched a minute of basketball all year, not even the tourney. I spent all that time with my kid. Did I tell you he picked my bracket… and it WON!!” You plot to rob that bank to steal all that money but instead vow to find a wife to make your own baby for next year.

The accountant who bases his picks based on a certain criteria based on everything except sports

You look at this person as your most formidable opponent in your scouting report of the office. “I bet this person has an Excel spreadsheet breaking down every stat of every team and it spits out the winner for him! I bet he has some made up stat that nobody else has ever thought of”, you think. What you don’t realize is yes, he does have a spreadsheet, but no, none of the inputs has anything to do with sports. Student enrollment, number of famous alumni, endowment size and number of majors are just a few of the factors that his spreadsheets take into account when picking his final four. While he always picks the Ivy League participant to win their first round game, the rest of his spreadsheet is surprisingly effective at predicting the outcomes. “But where does the offensive efficiency of Xavier factor into his projections,” you wonder. You then conspire to plant a virus on his computer to destroy that program when you realize he can’t even tell you that mascot for Xavier.

The NBA addict whose NBA fantasy team picks the winners

This guy knows a lot about basketball, yet knows nothing about NCAA basketball. You always ask if he caught the game over the weekend but he simply replies with an ignorant remark like, “I only watch the best basketball players in the world play and you can only find them in the NBA. I won’t watch college basketball until they put the semi-circle under the basket.” He begrudgingly enters the bracket pool, mainly because he loves to gamble and wants to show everyone how easy it is to pick NCAA games. He bases his picks based on which colleges have the best alumni in the NBA. This means he immediately rules out Duke from the Elite 8 because of the failures of Christian Lattener and Trajan Langdon, while he picks Memphis to repeat in the Final Four because “Rose is my fantasy PG and he is putting up big numbers this year”. You scoff at his picks because he is picking based on players who are no longer playing at their respective schools. Before long, however, you realize that his picks are pretty spot on and he is ahead of you in the standings for another year. You vow to never watch an NBA game ever again.

The casual fan who copies his favorite analyst’s bracket

You wake up early Saturday every morning to watch College Gameday and see what color Digger’s tie and highlighter will be, what idiotic thing Hubert Davis will say and hope Bob Knight will forget where he is and start swearing like an angry contestant on I Love Money 2 about the lack of consistency in the block/charge call in college basketball. While Jay Bilas spouts the occasional good nugget about Siena’s star player that you tuck away for future reference, you realize most of the stuff they say is useless for your tournament bracket. Then comes the selection show that you have waited for since the buzzer sounded last April on Kansas’ victory over Memphis. The bracket comes out and you need some time to digest and pour over all the possibilities before you decide who will cut down the nets. You watch the end of the selection show and see Bilas, Phelps and Vitale give their projections for the tournament. You scoff as they have no seed higher than a #5 seed in the Elite Eight. “Take a chance! There’s no way the bracket will be chalk the whole way.”
You go to work the next day amid excited chatter about the bracket. You attempt to make conversation with someone about it who you find out “basically did Dick Vitale’s bracket because he likes Duke and I really like Duke..did you see them play last night? Kyle Sandler was looking nice.” You shake your head and walk back to your cubicle knowing that this guy has no shot of winning the pool. However, lucky for this guy, this is the one year out of 20 that no major upsets happen and Vitale’s chalk bracket ended up winning the tournament. Your hate for Vitale grows exponentially as you know he now cheated you out of a Blu-Ray Player.

Wrap-up

So which one do you think is the worst way to lose?

Have you ever been one of these people?
Lost to one of these people?
Recognize one of these attributes in someone?
Can you think of any others?
Leave some comments.

Hope you enjoyed.