Good Morning: Brackets, mascots, cash make March a truly mad time
It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
Wednesday was St. Patrick’s Day, the sun has returned and spring break may be just a week away, but the real spring holiday started Thursday and lasts into next month: March Madness.
That’s right, by the time you read this, (I wrote it on Wednesday, I swear) I’m sure my bracket will be wrong, but it won’t matter. The tournament is a tradition that can’t get any better. Not only does it involve sports overload, but there’s usually money involved.
A 2009 Microsoft survey found that 45 percent of adult Americans participate in some sort of office pool, which reportedly cost American companies $1.8 billion just from loss of productivity this week last year.
Trust me, it’s worth it.
That means a heck of a lot of other people get into these pools besides die-hard basketball fans. It’s the people who picked Siena against Purdue just because they are Indiana alums or put Florida in the Sweet Sixteen because they’d rather be on the beach than at work.
So I hope you’re in one of these pools, unless you’re an NCAA athlete. (The NCAA makes $6 billion from television rights alone but a couple dollars from one of its athletes, even at Franklin, into such a pool may destroy the integrity of the college game).
And if you don’t win this year, try the mascot theory. My colleague Mike Smith applied this strategy to his bracket. Some of his odd picks were No. 1 seed Syracuse losing to No. 16 Vermont in the first round because oranges couldn’t harm anything, much less a big cat.
And he has No. 16 East Tennessee State upsetting No. 1 Kentucky because five buccaneers would easily swashbuckle their way to slaying five wildcats.
Keep in mind a No. 16 seed – there are four of them – has never beaten a No. 1 seed.
He only picked Ohio State, a No. 2 seed, because buckeyes are poisonous nuts and he thought some of the other mascots would eat them and die.
And for anyone who argues brackets can’t be educational; we found out that a Jayhawk isn’t a bird. It’s actually derived from the term Jayhawker, which refers to a militant abolitionist in the days of the Kansas-Missouri border wars over slavery.
Some of my picks for the tournament include a Final Four of No. 1-ranked Kansas, Syracuse, West Virginia and the underdog Baylor Bears, with the Jayhawks winning their second championship in three years. Baylor in Indianapolis would be a special story. Plus its point guard Tweety Carter has one of the best names in the tournament.
Enjoy the games everyone.
LOL
