march madness begins

For the past 3 years or so, I have played in my friend Tom's NCAA tournament pool.

You have to understand that I really do not like sports and very rarely get excited about tournaments in general. Matt is a huge football fan and leave him to it since I can't stand to even be in the same room with people who are watching a game on TV.

But there's something special about college basketball. I don't know, maybe it's the underdog in me, but I feel a kind of kinship to those guys. And the tournament season only lasts about 3 weeks, so I don't have to commit to months of dribbling and squeaking and the mindless drone of announcers.

So for 5 bucks, I submit my bracket into Tom's upset pool. I know very little, if anything about the teams playing and have each year chosen my teams at random. Using a teapot, coffee carafe, and this year, the lid of a cd spindle, I put all the teams inside, give it a good shake and start picking.

This year I cheated.

My first bracket was picked from a Kashi cereal box. It looked really ugly. So I started over from scratch using the spindle cover and was much happier with the results.

I have some interesting upsets this year. I don't care all that much about winning, I just like the fact that it's anyone's game and that that my way of picking is just as reasonable as someone who pores over stats and such. So when I do better with my random upsets I like to rub that in their faces. Sweetly, of course. I would like to beat Latonya because she takes it very seriously.

Matt kicked some ass last year. He tied with the winner, but lost the tie breaker.
Best of luck to him.

Let the games begin!!