Thinking Like A Chick

It’s that time of year again when seemingly normal people turn into gamblers. The NCAA tournament is upon us and that means its time for your office pool. Even the Duchess, who is against gambling, is throwing down $10 and pouring over the brackets. As for me, the simple formula explains it all: semi-reformed degenerate gambler + office pool = good times. However, the reason I am slightly reformed is that I have a nasty habit of losing. I’ve never finished in the money of my office pool for the tourney. So, I decided to get a little crazy and change it up a little bit.

Women are crazy. There is no argument about this one. I’ve have never met one sane woman. I don’t think they exist (by the by, the last few sentences will get me in trouble with the Duchess, so I hope you all appreciate this). However, craziness pays off sometimes, and one of those times is tournament time. Some chick in your office pool usually makes a run at the money, usually by picking teams on some combination of colors, mascot, and association with someone they know. They also have a method to their madness and they play it conservative at the right times. They aren’t going to have some 16 seed topple a 1 seed and they normally clear out the riff-raff by the time the Elite Eight rolls around. Ladies will clear out the 4 and 5 seeds early, so they don’t have to think about them, and it makes it easier to push the 1, 2, or 3 seeds into the Final Four. It’s controlled chaos and it seems to work. So, this year I decided to throw conscious thought out the window and form a bracket that no reasonable person would normally concoct (tourney play is never reasonable anyway, case in point would be George Mason in 2006).

Without going through my whole bracket, I have 6 double digit seeds making it into the second round (only one being a 10 seed), I have 7 seed Butler getting to the Sweet 16, and I have 3 seed Xavier getting to the Final Four. However, there is some conservative picks. The rest of the Final Four is Kansas (1), UNC (1), and Texas (2), with Kansas winning it all. Seven out of eight 1 and 2 seeds are making it to the Sweet 16 (minus Tennessee). I’ve only gotten screwed once so far, with Kentucky losing to Marquette. I realize now that there was conscious thought with that pick, not letting loose and thinking “well, I like the fact Marquette has a Q in its name”.

So, how’s it going to play out? Who knows? I do know I’m last right now in my office pool, so maybe this wasn’t the best idea. Of course, I have to stop thinking about it and hope that a bunch of kids 18-21 are going to win me some scratch and help prove my theory. Either that or smack me down like usual. With that said, let’s all root for Xavier to make it to the Final Four, which will give me some credibility. Not a lot, but some and that’s all I can really hope for.