Me and my bracket

My bracket is not quite busted. Not to gloat, but I’m probably beating you. I’m doing so well that I wish we had an office pool this year (our annual gambling/ bounding exercise was a victim of the pandemic; it was hard enough to collect everyone’s entry fees when most of us were in the same space). I might not be winning, but I’d be showing well.

If North Carolina beats St. Peter’s this afternoon (they’re off to a 9-3 start) I will have correctly predicted two of the final four teams. My prospective national champion is still alive. I’m in the top 1.1 million of entries in the the ESPN Men’s Tournament Challenge, which doesn’t sound that great until you think about how there were more than 17.3 million brackets submitted this year.

I’m at the 94 percentile (if my math is right, and I’m sure someone will tell me if it’s not, I’m in the top 93.692 percent of all brackets submitted). That is officially not bad.

In fact, if I were a “celebrity”—you can’t be a journalist and identify as a celebrity—I would be leading the celebrity division. The only one in touch with me would be Kevin Blackistone, the University of Maryland professor who frequently appears on ESPN and NPR and is Karen’s favorite sports commentator.

As we sit here on Sunday afternoon, I am 20 points ahead of Professor Blackistone, but he could potentially beat me out. If Kansas wins the national championship, he’ll beat me by a good margin. (Come on, Villanova.)

But I’ve clinched second in my imaginary ESPN Celebrities plus Me game. Eat it, celebrity sports yappers David Jacoby, Clinton Yates and Frank Isola.

Even more exciting is that it looks like I have a real chance to win the Tony Kornheiser Show subgroup in the ESPN challenge. I’m currently third, but the two yahoos ahead of me in the group, Josh L. and edthehead82, have respectively picked have picked Auburn and Arizona as their national champions. That can’t happen. As well as I can figure, I’ll likely pass both of them.

But I could be passed myself by edthehead’s second bracket (full disclosure: I have three brackets)—which has Villanova winning it all— or by the guy currently in sixth place, JDoyle520. I’m more worried about JDoyle250 because we have the same national champion.

While my math skills are sufficient to figure out in what percentile my bracket resided, they’re insufficient to sort through all the possible scenarios that still exist. My takeaway is that, going into the final weekend of the tournament, I’ll have a shot.

I could finish first in the group. I could potentially crack the top five (or maybe even one) percent of the ESPN brackets. So far as I know, there’s no money in it, but I’ve never won an NCAA tournament pool before.

I’ve come close, finishing third once back in the ’90s. Karen had a heartbreaking three-year streak where she went into the final weekend with a good chance to win and finished just out of the money every time.

I don’t think this sorry record is because I don’t know much about basketball; I know quite a bit about basketball. (Karen doesn’t know that much about basketball, though she reminds that when she was in college she was the color announcer for Cleveland State Vikings’ radio broadcasts.)

Most of the organized basketball I played was in the days before the three-point shot, but I’ve spent lots of time watching basketball. I was a player-coach on a team that won the Lake Charles municipal men’s league in 1981 despite our having three headbands and eight advanced degrees between our six players.

I was on the Shreveport Journal team that beat the Shreveport Steamer, a team made up up professional football players, in a municipal league game. I could dunk a regulation basketball well into my 30s if I sprayed TuffSkin on my hands. I once interviewed Charles Barkley while he simultaneously rode an exercise bike and ate Egg McMuffins.

When it comes to knowing about basketball, I would put myself in at least the 93.692th percentile. There are people who know more, but most of them smell like gym socks a considerable portion of the time.

I’m not doing well in my bracket this year because I know anything about basketball; what you know about basketball has nothing to do with whether you can predict the outcome of a bunch of games played by athletes on the cusp of adulthood. I’m doing well in my bracket this year because I figured out a system.

It’s simple: I decided to pick a bracket I could root against.

That’s not that hard. I’ve written enough about sports that my fandom was lanced and drained away long ago. I don’t gloat when my alma mater LSU wins another national title; if anything, I’d prefer the University of Arkansas beat them so I don’t have to put up with all you sad-sack mopes. I don’t actively root for anybody. But I root hard against some teams.

So I thought about what my nightmare championship game would be and worked back from there. Duke versus Auburn. The sanctimonious Bobby Knight-tutored Mike Krzyzewski, he of the Elvis-black hair dye, the personal K brand logo and the ongoing farewell tour, versus Auburn’s un-indicted co-conspirator Bruce Pearl.

Since I like Pearl a little bit—he’s got a sense of humor—I picked Duke to win it all, to cement Krzyzewski’s claim on being the greatest ever. A Duke victory might plunge the nation into darkness, but it’s what I had to go with. It’s what I dread most.

(I shared this plan on my Facebook page. My friend Don McCormick chimed in from California: “So you’re responsible for this?” Yeah, I think I am, Don.)

Obviously, the system isn’t perfect. Auburn let me down and I got nervous when the Hogs beat Gonzaga.

Gonzaga is basically Duke West (and Drew Timme is the muscle bear Christian Laettner) and by all rights (I thought) they should have been facing off against their worsers in the Sweet 16. But Musselman’s pure-of-heart rock-throwing crew somehow came through.

But I thought about it. The fault was in my logic. It was worse to have this plucky, likable Razorback team eliminated by Duke rather than Duke Jr. The Sweet 16 victory was just a setup for the loss to Duke.

Now I have to worry about whether those bracket gods are going to jerk me around by snatching away my victory at the last moment.

Nope, it’s still worse if Duke wins.