Archive for March, 2010

Your NCAA tournament bracket is hosed, right?

I mean, mine is, because I had Kansas winning the whole thing like a jillion other people. Barack Obama’s is because he did too, in spite of the fact that he could not be satisfied with the whole health care thing and had to jinx my Maryland Terrapins by picking Michigan State to prevail on his clearly premeditated Sunday of win for the ages.

That up there is President Obama filling in his bracket last year, when he was correct about North Carolina. Holy NIT, what a difference a year makes, huh?

Anyway. He is, “like the rest of America, examining the rubble of his bracket,” the White House said. That’s what he gets for saying MSU had a great coach while Maryland had a great player. Yeah. That’s what he gets.

But I have rubble too, and a star point guard on his knees on the court at the end of a game and not because he was praising the Lord for a last-second miracle. So whatever. Bygones. Almost.

Blah blah blah. You probably know all about the rampant upsets in the first and, to a lesser degree, the second round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. But let’s talk about it some more, because I just can’t seem to stop. Georgetown failed. Nova’s all, “Whatever, going home, gonna stop by Costco and then watch the rest of this crap on tv.” Kansas is figuratively not in Kansas anymore – which, clearly, sent a lot of brackets airballing just north of the trash can.

And no, I do not want to talk about one-second-left randomly-perfect three-pointers.  It’s too soon. (Really it is. I’m not kidding.)

When the second round was over I read some insane statistic that was very statistical in stating that approximately three people in all of bracketland had perfect picks. * **

ESPN said its top picker had lost four games already, bearing out the approximately 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 shot at picking a perfect wire-to-wire bracket.

But what those statistics had not yet indicated is that Alex Hermann, 17, of the Chicago area, has picked every game correctly out of those played so far.

Alex and his family share that he is autistic. He says that his key to success is that he’s “kind of good at math and at stats I see on TV during the game.”

I’d say so.

Alex actually owns the fact that his bracket success is “amazing,” the only downside being his entry into the only CBSSports.com bracket game that has no prize. Yahoo was offering a million for a perfect bracket. Sportsbook.com would pony up 13 million. CBSSports says they don’t track brackets and won’t confirm his, but I’m going with the honor system on this one. You read and tell me if you don’t agree.

And I think someone at least needs to give this boy some season tickets – maybe Purdue, his brother’s alma mater who he picked to win the whole thing.

Odds are they won’t, (odds, ha, right.) but I wouldn’t count them out. The president may have handled health care for now but I’m thinking if I had a decision to make I’d hope Alex Hermann’s number was listed. And that his mom would let me talk to him.

*This is not the real statistic, friends. And those three people (except for Alex Hermann of course) were drunk at the time they filled out their brackets and/or were choosing entirely based on cutesy names and jersey colors which does nothing to explain Duke because there is nothing cutesy about Duke except oh, maybe the powder blue business.

**This asterisk thing was not premeditated. It just sort of happens.

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