Top 25 Rules for Winning March Madness
Thursday, March 15, 2012
There is only one certainty to filling out a March Madness college basketball bracket - you will lose to someone who has never watched an NCAA basketball game.
March Madness is here, and it can only mean one thing – people yelling at you to fill out a bracket by noon on Thursday. College basketball's championship derby is an entertaining blast. It always includes thrilling upsets and buzzer-beaters, but it's increasingly become a pressurized, almost compulsory national quiz show, as hard-core fans and newcomers crunch data, consult athletic friends and cluelessly try to guess the winners of a tournament that concludes April 2nd in New Orleans, LA.
There's no sports spectacle quite like it, and no shared event that brings a workplace closer together (other than free donuts, or a Super Bowl office pool). But before you click on the video live-stream program, turn down the volume, and pretend to be doing your actual job, here are some March Madness rules to consider:
1. Don’t Worry: There is only one certainty to filling out a March Madness bracket, and it is this – you will lose to someone who has never watched an NCAA basketball game in his or her life. You will also lose to a 7-year-old, a golden retriever and a lobster.
2. The person at the office who knows every single detail about college basketball, who can name the pets of assistant coaches and spend 45 minutes rhapsodizing about strength of schedule? Out of the pool by Friday at 2:00 pm. Every time.
3. If this is your first NCAA office pool, a fun thing to do is just fill in every blank bracket with the word "SPARTY!!!" You will always beat the guy who picks Syracuse.
4. Do not pick all four number-one seeds to make the Final Four. That's like going to Paris and dining at Pizza Hut.
5. Do NOT skip work to watch the NCAA tournament. If your company didn't want you to watch the NCAA tournament at work, they would never have given you a computer, pom-poms and a frozen margarita machine under your desk.
6. Yes "Bracketology" is a word. But it is also a felony to say "Bracketology."
7. The NCAA and television networks don't want you to know this but all the tournament games are played in an airline hangar in Burbank, CA, with a cast of 12,500 hired actors playing "college fans." If you look very closely at your screen, you can see this is the case. That guy covered in Duke blue? He was cheering for Creighton a couple hours ago. He also works part-time at Jamba Juice and has done two episodes of "NCIS" and one "Vampire Diaries."
8. On Tuesday and Wednesday the NCAA holds something called the "First Four." Like that 4:00 pm office "brainstorming" meeting, this is half-baked and utterly optional.
9. Remember, it's the "Final Four," the "Elite Eight," the "Sweet Sixteen," and the "We Don't Have Anything That Works Cleverly With 32."
10. Don’t Worry: You're totally allowed to go into your bracket at any time and change all of your picks. This is what your boss has done for years.
11. Look, everyone knows about your secret "other" bracket and your secret "other" pool. You're going to secretly lose that "other" one, too, genius.
12. There's always somebody who makes a big deal about how the NCAA is much more entertaining than the NBA. This person hasn't been watching the Miami Heat, the Chicago Bulls, or the Oklahoma City Thunder.
13. It's okay to love the NCAA anthem "One Shining Moment." But the true story? "One Shining Moment" was written by a unicorn living in Barry Manilow's backyard.
14. Cheer for Harvard, but be careful: You don't want Harvard people thinking they're something special. Or cheer for Vermont, but don’t let northern New Englanders think we like them. And never – ever – cheer for UConn.
15. Don't be one of those cynics who thinks that the NCAA tournament is just a creepy big-money spectacle of adults obsessing over college students. You'll sound like a fool. Everyone's obsessed with 4th grade basketball prospects anyway.
16. You're not a real college basketball coach until you own a mustard-colored, double-breasted blazer.
17. There's no word that's more exciting to say than "Gonzaga."
18. Don’t Worry: Take the tournament with a grain of salt. Nobody remembers who went to the Final Four anyway. Who was in the 2011 Final Four? No peeking! That's right: UConn, Butler, Worcester State and the Rhode Island School of Design.
19. If you are planning to go to the Final Four in New Orleans, please be aware that the bars close promptly at never.
20. Best thing about March Madness: Next week, everyone's going to be talking about a school you have never heard of, a mascot you didn’t know existed, and the secretary in your office smoking everyone in the office pool.
21. Of course, days later, that lovable school you have never heard of will get smoked by 40 by Kentucky. And the know-nothing secretary just took your money.
22. Someone will come in Monday and loudly announce that his or her bracket is "totally destroyed." This person is going to win the pool.
23. Don't worry: Half of the people in your pool will also lose a team (or two) in their own Final Four after opening week.
24. The Big East has a lot of good teams, but maybe not a GREAT team, now that they’ve lost their starting center. Great teams win it all.
25. Don't worry: None of us has any idea how to spell "Krzyzewski."
With special thanks to Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal for his inspiration.
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