(1) As a general rule, West coast over East coast. Sorry, but my ancestors trekked westward along the Mormon Trail, and I grew up literally a hop, skip, and a jump from the Oregon Trail. Westward Ho!
(2) Keep it personal. Choose schools/places family or friends have attended/lived.
(3) Be geographically aspirational. Pick schools in places you would like to live over places you would not want to live.
(4) Pay some attention to the seed thingies. Evidently those numbers by the team names do mean something about the quality of the team.
(5) Go with your gut. For example, the year I won, Vanderbilt was ranked/seeded (Tony tells me that a rank is different than a seed...) higher than the team they played. However, I got recruiting material from Vanderbilt when I was applying to law schools and it was very snooty. I couldn't bring myself to choose a snooty school. Vanderbilt lost. I got extra points for picking the lower seed/ranked team.
(6) Don't watch college basketball. Don't do it before you fill out your brackets, and especially don't watch during the tournament. Too much time and tension involved. It can turn mild-mannered men (who shall remain nameless) into object-throwing, muttering, cursing creatures.
(7) When faced comparable choices, consider mascots and team colors. You don't want a lousy looking winner.
(8) Don't think of yourself as having entered a competition. That will make you feel bad when you lose. Think of yourself as having donated a small sum to a friend as a present. After all, if all your friends were pitching in $5.00 to buy a birthday gift for someone, you'd donate and you wouldn't feel bad that they got the nice whatever. And then if the nice whatever ends up coming back to you, it's just a nice surprise.
(9) Be loyal to those you love. In my winning bracket, I got to the point where I had to choose between Kansas and North Carolina. Now I'd rather live in North Carolina than Kansas (see strategy point #3), but I also love Tony and Tony loves Duke and true Duke fans hate North Carolina. I'd rather live with the man I love in Kansas than live in North Carolina, so I picked Kansas. Kansas won. I won.
(10) Don't tell the bracket organizer, who probably loves March Madness and yearns desperately to win year after year but never has, that this was your strategy. He will be on the verge of tears if he knows he's forking over the kitty to someone with a no-nothing-about-the-sport (albeit a winning) approach to March Madness.
And no, I'm not filling out a bracket this year. As Tony might say, "I have no more mountains left to climb."
5 comments:
This is what it must have felt like if say, Christopher Columbus, who spent his entire life navigating, sailing, charting the open seas, gathering investors for his journeys, "lobbying" the Queen of Spain through questionable tactics, and then finally setting sail for the New World, was beaten to the Americas by someone in a rowboat who was just out for a nice little sail, took a wrong turn, picked up some lucky wind, and accidentally bumped into Hispanola.
You see, I have dedicated the better part of my adult life trying to win a March Madness bracket, and I have yet to do so. My wife, who refers to the seeding as those "number thingies" wins on her second try. And now I can't even explain that I need to watch basketball in order to prepare for my tournament picks b/c she can just say I didn't watch at all and I won. And the thing is: I have absolutely no retort. I feel emasculated in a very real sense.
So, hat's off to Heather. I look at my brackets as a matter of grave importance. She treats them like a Save Haiti monetary donation yet she wins. Long live the Queen!
I could have used this advice a little sooner. I picked everything this morning before the games began. Mind you this was under the duress of kidney stone pain. I too do not follow college bb like I do football. The only team I really watch is BYU and that is because my better half always has it on. My picks this morning were totally random with the exception of BYU! And yeah I realized later that those little "number thingies" could have been significant. Oh well....but now that I have chosen, I feel invested in the wins and losses.
March Madness in our house refers to two very active children who have been cooped up in a house all winter, coupled with birthdays and lots of sweets, releasing their energy in painful ways. this is chris btw, audra forgot to log out
Genius! I think you've enraged many a bracket expert with this post and I love it.
Wow, Heather. Your strategy sounds similar to mine. I haven't won, but I have come in well ahead of my crazy brothers who are WAY more invested than I am. I can't say that I even like basketball, but occasionally do the brackets to annoy my brothers if I beat them :-)
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