If Not Madness, At Least A Bit Disturbed

Ukraine vs. Crimea vs. Russia. The missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370. Unemployment. That stupid skunk that’s back in the neighborhood. The cat whining at me because she wants to sit on my lap and claw up my legs and I won’t let her.

All sources of stress.

But in the United States (and other places), it’s time to be distracted by something both totally irrelevant in the big picture but tremendously important if your team is involved. If you know anything about sports in the United States, you know that tomorrow kicks off NCAA basketball’s three-week long championship tournament, otherwise known as “March Madness.” (Yes, I know that the “First Four” play-in games were yesterday and today, but they’re just stupid marketing. It’s a 64 team tournament because 64 is a power of two — either expand it to 128 teams or have a “preliminary” round of 96 teams with the top 32 teams getting a bye… But that’s another rant.)

Anyone who loves March Madness also will be filling out a bracket, making their own WAGs (Wild Ass Guesses) about how it’s going to turn out. POTUS even does it, live on ESPN. (He’s picking Michigan State to take it all, playing Louisville in the final game.) This year there’s an additional incentive to spend a few minutes filling out a bracket — a certified perfect bracket is worth one billion dollars. For real. It’s being run by Quicken Loans, Yahoo, and Warren Buffett.

Reality says that it’s not much of a threat to Mr. Buffett’s cash. In describing the odds, I believe the sports and news shows are making up new words to describe what lies beyond “thousand,” “million,” “billion,” “trillion,” “quintillion,” “septillion,” and “octillion.” (I may have made some of those up myself.) Picking randomly give you a one in holycrapillion of getting it right, while even picking all of the favorites only lowers the odds to one in toughshitillion.

But it’s a lark, and you can’t take your one in a youhavegottobekiddingillion chance if you don’t play.

So here is my bracket (click to embiggenate), with my heart ruling my head in that third round where I’ve got UCLA beating Florida and going on to win it all. In my fantasy world (and “fantasy” is truly the key word) UCLA beats Louisville in the final. Holy John Wooden vs Denny Crum, Batman!

Anyone want to give me odds of staying alive though tomorrow night’s games? 20:00 tomorrow night? 16:00 tomorrow afternoon?