Bracket busting

Am I participating in the great American pastime of filling out NCAA men's basketball tournament brackets?  You bet I am.  And so is everyone in this house.  As Noel and I agonize over our uninformed, gut-level picks disproportionately influenced by whatever mid-major tournaments we happened to tune into over the weekend, Cady Gray used the "I just picked whichever had the lower number" system and Archer   exhibited a system that frankly none of us can understand.

What I don't understand -- what hasn't been explained to my satisfaction -- is how we are supposed to deal with the four play-in games.  The field has been expanded by four teams which play each other for the privilege of meeting the overall first and second seeds.  But now the four overall lowest seeds also play each other, with the winners entering their respective brackets as number 11 or 12 seeds.

I was never fond of having to pretend that the winner of the previous single play-in game had no chance of victory, as symbolized by having to pick a bracket without an actual contestant on that number 16 line.  How can you evaluate the chances of success of a team you can't identify before your brackets are due?  And now the problem has compounded and gotten completely out of control.  Historically, number 12 seeds win over number 5 seeds more than one-third of the time.  Yet I am supposed to know whether to pick that line when I have no idea who will be on it?

Or maybe it's best treated as an invisible pre-pick.  You have to decide which of the two play-in teams will win, then pick according to that choice.  Then why don't I get a point for picking what is now officially termed "the first round"?

The tournament has changed, but bracket competitions haven't changed with it.  I hope somebody's working on a better system.

The madness begins

As if my conference last weekend, and admissions events, school musicals, and fun runs this week weren't enough, we've got company for the weekend. But what company! For the first time in years, our oldest dearest mutual pal Scott Tobias has made the pilgrimage to Conway for the first weekend of March Madness. As with many other families, groups of friends, and workplaces around the country, the NCAA men's basketball tournament is a near-religious event.

My boss and I were reminiscing about the days before the internet, when you hand-drew a bracket and scribbled in teams during the Sunday afternoon selection show so that you could start working on your matchups before the newspaper with the full-page printed bracket appeared the next day. And then after writing in your picks on the newspaper's bracket, you carried around that folded-up, quickly-decaying piece of newsprint for the next three weeks, scratching out your losses and clinging to your remaining final four entrants.

I've been working so hard and running around to so many events, that I'm really looking forward to a weekend on the couch agonizing over teams in which I have no intrinsic rooting interest. (And then there's Wake Forest.) After last weekend and this week, I think I've earned it. And the best part about it is that Scott's visit gives the whole thing a festival atmosphere. Bring on the barbecue, the beverages, and the buzzer-beaters!

Give a hoot, read a book

Today's post -- about zigzag socks and conference knitting -- is at Toxophily.

Two notes for you here: First, my friends at Ex Libris Anonymous are moving their studio, and they need to get rid of a few of their amazing journals made from old library books. The more you buy, the fewer they have to tote. As my former teaching assistants can attest, they make great gifts.

Second, I've got to fill out my tourney brackets tonight, and between my travel over the weekend and desperate pre-Spring Break teachenating and administramationing, I've done zero preparation. So I'll be going with pure instinct. Last year I came up with a name for my brackets that I do not expect ever to surpass: Boom Goes The Donnamite. And with avid research and careful bracketology, I did pretty well. I didn't win my brackets, but I finished quite high.

I can't help but use Boom Goes The Donnamite for my bracket name again. It's just too perfect. In a few weeks, however, the name will be stuck near the bottom of the standings in both my pools, looking all soiled and shopworm, its cultural reference cheapening by the minute.

In short, my goals for the tournament are modest but achievable. I will ruin the perfect bracket name.

Good stuff to read

No, no, not this post! Check out this essay by Josh Levin in Slate, explaining how the Jason Kidd trade somehow managed to involve paying $4 million to a player who's already retired, thanks to the once well-intentioned NBA salary cap.

Then settle in to read one of my favorite New Yorker pieces of the past ten years, a profile of A&R man Jason Flom by the masterful John Seabrook, which provided me with a quotation I whip out at least once a month: "Anybody can make a record, but only a major label can make a really expensive record."

If you've read something recently that gave you a peek into a surprising or bewildering world, share it in the comments.