LAST WEEK I CAUGHT UP with my old college housemates. It had been several months since I’d spoken with them, and, as it turns out, much is going on in their lives. One is dating a girl he plans to marry. The wife of another is about to give birth to their second child. And a third just got engaged and, oh, his father is finally out of the hospital, recovering from surgery. “That’s all great news,” I said. “But wait till you hear this. I just won my NCAA office pool!”
This time each year, millions of Americans stop their daily routines (and supposedly waste countless hours of productivity) to watch March Madness–when 64 college basketball teams from around the country compete for the national title. (No, I do not count the play-in game.) The first round takes two days and involves 32 games in cities like Jacksonville, Dallas, Philadelphia, and San Diego. Tip-off is usually around noon and the last game finishes up somewhere on the West Coast a little after midnight. Two weeks later, the 64 teams are whittled down to a Final Four. But which ones?
Fans fill out their own brackets, guessing which teams will advance from one round to the next. For me, this is an arduous task requiring a careful assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the various schools, some of whom amass winning records by playing cupcake schedules. Others rest on a history of successful tournament appearances but may, in fact, be vulnerable now that last year’s seniors have graduated. The NCAA committee sometimes ranks a school higher than it should, leading to potential mismatches. For instance, I wondered, could eleventh-seeded Wisconsin-Milwaukee beat sixth-seeded Oklahoma? Did the Sooners even deserve to be a sixth seed? I didn’t think so, and the Panthers defeated them 82-74. Few thought Tennessee deserved a second seed and, sure enough, they were ousted in the second round by the Wichita State Shockers. I bet that hurt.
One certainty in my ten years of bracket-filling is the 12-5 upset. There is always at least one twelfth-seeded team that beats out a fifth seed in the first round. This year I picked Syracuse to lose to Texas A&M, which they did, 58-66. People seem always to pick Duke to go all the way. But I knew the Blue Devils were relying too heavily on one player and could be stopped. This led me to choose LSU to beat them in the Sweet Sixteen. Final score: LSU 62, Duke 54. (I knew the Blue Devils were in trouble when I read about LSU’s Glen Davis, a 6′ 9″ forward weighing a terrifying 308 pounds. Known as “Big Baby,” Davis can eat three Big Macs and two large fries in a single sitting.)
No one is perfect, especially in this year’s pool. Not a single person–me included–thought George Mason would make it to the semifinals. I did, however, pick two of the Final Four: LSU and UCLA. That would be more than either the Washington Post‘s Tony Kornheiser or the New York Post‘s Lenn Robbins got right. (For a little perspective, of the more than three million entries into ESPN’s tournament challenge, only two had the correct Final Four.)
It is better to know a little than a lot about your teams. Too much knowledge leads to second-guessing and gets in the way of listening to one’s gut instinct. Also, remember there has never been a Final Four with all number-one seeds. This year’s Final Four contains none.
I don’t expect to start winning every year. It’s taken me a decade to reach the top and may take another decade before I reach it again. But for just one moment, I stand above my peers. And none of them is in a position to overtake me during the final rounds, no matter what the results. My name sits atop the list, which is taped outside my door. I plan on keeping it there for at least another three weeks.
After the national championship game, CBS runs the credits along with highlights from the tourney to the tune of a song called “One Shining Moment,” whose sole purpose is to make grown men cry. But there is one line that bears relevance:
Feel the beat of your heart,
Feel the wind in your face,
It’s more than a contest,
It’s more than a race.
Winning the office pool is more than a contest. It’s more than a race. It’s bigger than any wedding engagement or birth announcement (though maybe just short of your father surviving a difficult surgery). It’s about years of analysis, hours in front of the television, and an attention to long-term trends finally paying off. And my achievement is in no way diminished by the fact that, as I write this article, second place looks like it could go to the daughter of a colleague, a 12-year-old girl who had to ask if UCLA was in Los Angeles.
-Victorino Matus
