Last night was the NCAA Men's Basketball final between Gonzaga and Baylor. As a result of the came I won my tournament prediction group on the website of network of Big Demonic Sports Network (BDSN) by picking the results better than any of the other folk in the group.
The group is named after a former Congressman from Youngstown who became notorious in the 1970s for his strange hair and offbeat behavior, among other things. All the other seven folks in the group have some personal or family connection to Youngstown, Ohio,
As is usual for these tournament prediction challenges, to compete in the group you have to pick all the games in advance for the 64-team tournament and also guess the score of the final as a tiebreaker.
Strangely, when the tournament was over, the more-knowledgable basketball fans had ended towards last place. This included Karen, who is Ginger's father's second wife, and who had been his high school sweetheart in Youngstown, acting in plays together in the drama club, although they had then gotten married to other people. Ginger and I had the privilege of going to their wedding a couple years back in the North Carolina town where Karen had lived many years with her late first husband working as a public school teacher and raising their family. She had even developed a tidewater accent.
In the years she lived there, Karen had become a passionate fan of the university team in the state, the Tarheels, who are perennial powerhouse but who were not a favorite this year. A couple years back when Ginger and I went with her father and Karen on a trip to Las Vegas, the trip landed smack in the run up to the men's tournament during a year when the Tarheels were highly favored to win. Karen was glued to the television in the airport and in various casino lounges, looking at the games and results on BDSN.
This year, Karen had picked Illinois, a number one seed, to win the tournament, this year, but they had been upset in an early round. Some of the others had picked Ohio State, who was also forced out early.
Ginger came in second in the end, beating out her cousin who lives in Los Angeles. They both picked the losing team last night, and thus they fell short to my awesomeness, Because her cousin had forgotten to guess the score of the final, which is used as tie-breaker. Ginger won that by default.
I came in first despite watching not a single second of. basketball coverage all season, nor paying any attention to the game results and rankings, I don't watch BDSN at all and can't imagine wasting a second doing so.
My strategy hin the bracket challenge consisted of waiting until the last minute and being reminded by Ginger to fill out my bracket before the tournament began. I clicked the link in my email which took me to the BDSN website. I looked at the seedings without any prior knowledge of who had been placed where. I began doing my picks.
For the first round, I chose the higher-ranked seed (that is, #1 to beat #16,, and #2 to beat #15, etc.), and then I did the same for all the following rounds until I had all four number one seeds in the Final Four.
At that point, I chose the team based on alphabetical order, which was essentially random as far as I was concerned. For the score of the final, I went on the web and did thirty seconds of research to discover that the statistically most probable score in the final of the tournament is 77-68, which is what I entered. It took me less than five minutes to complete the entire process.
It's an obnoxious formula, almost as obnoxious as the Ohio Congressman from the 1970s. But it tells you what I think of college basketball. I almost didn't want to win.
At least for the college teams, I was willing to participate. I'd rather pay money than be forced to participate in a bracket challenge for theAmerican professional basketball league. They are a traitorous business and have become un-American. Anyone who follows them at this point earns a mark of suspicion from me as that person's character. This will be doubly so if we wind up at war with the CCP in the coming weeks.
Today I'm basking in my victory. When I see Ginger's father and Karen in their home in rural New Jersey this fall, as is our plans, I am going to crow over my petty triumph. But next year I am thinking of picking at least one upset!
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