Started from the bottom, still at the bottom: The story of one man’s very bad bracket
I’ll come clean. I did not put a lot of logic into my selections.
I like college basketball. I don’t love it. Unlike the many students we have at Oswego I am not a Syracuse fan. Being raised in Buffalo, Syracuse might as well be in Utah.
Note-did not know this till now, but there is a Syracuse in Utah.
Now as I have become older, I have become a bigger fan of college sports, and basketball in general. Since high school I watch as much NCAA tournament games as I can. I even watch a some of the big regular season games.
But lets call a spade a spade. I am not an expert when it comes to college basketball.
That’s why I always find it difficult with making a bracket. I hate being the person that just picks all the top seeds. That’s just boring.
I also have grown a liking to Notre Dame. So after making back-to-back elite eight appearances, I felt confident with taking them that far again.
This was the first of the long line of mistakes I made.
Another mistake I made was going against the overwhelming amount of people that picked the number twelve seeded Middle Tennessee over the number five seeded Minnesota.
I thought, what if the mid major everyone thinks will win, actually loses.
I was wrong. In fact I was wrong with a lot of my first round picks, 13 to be exact.
Among the 13 brackets in the class group, mine was at the very bottom.
So a slow start, but all of my final fours still remained, only one of my elite eight was gone, thanks Southern Methodist by the way.
But I still remained positive.
I had no idea that this wasn’t even the worst of how bad it could get.
It started on Saturday afternoon when “Press Virgina” tore the Fighting Irish part by part. There went another elite eight team.
Then the BIG one happened.
The Wisconsin Badgers took down the Number One overall team the Villanova Wildcats, taking out many bracket’s champion.
Not mine, but still one of my final fours.
Another one of my final fours was Wichita State. This is where I go back to the beginning about not putting a lot of logic into it. Did I really think the Shockers would make that kind of run. No. But it’s not like I have that strong of feeling about any team.
I mean really, there were about 20 million brackets sent to ESPN. How many do you think actually were like-yes there is no doubt this is the team that will win it all.
It’s a big guessing game. A game that I’m just not good at I guess.
With the loss of Arizona and Michigan, it took out my finals match up. Thus guaranteeing I will come in last in the class group.
And I’m not alone in picking bad brackets. As shown by this Outside The Lines Investigative report that features some of worst pickers at ESPN.
As Michelle Beadle says “I’m bad at brackets, I don’t care.”
So there you have it, that’s my story. I’m bad at the guessing game of march madness. Does this mean it will stop me from making more brackets in the future? Absolutely not. But when all my final fours are gone by the sweet sixteen again. It won’t bother me at all.
