Hey Brewer

A few weeks back I posted my thoughts on how to fill out a winning bracket. I’ll be honest, it was by far the most time I have ever spent on a post. I referenced several sites, pored over historical data, studied the bracket, reviewed rosters, listened to podcasts, read articles from every major sports writer on ESPN, Yahoo and SI and I was genuinely proud of what I wrote.

I filled out my bracket according to the rules I laid out and I thought I was going to be a big winner when all was said and done. When the tourney kicked off I was far away in Mexico, visiting family and as I snuck peeks at the USC-KState scores on my Blackberry, I realized that my post was going to come back to haunt me.

So let’s review the numerous way I managed to get this tournament all wrong:

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DISCLAIMER: I spent the last 2 weeks out of the country so unfortunately most of my NCAA action was restricted to reading box scores on ESPN and sneaking peeks at my Blackberry score updates during lunch and dinner. I arrived back home over the weekend and was excited that I would get to watch the Memphis-Texas game as well as the Davidson-Kansas game.

The reason I give that disclaimer is because up until yesterday I was completely unaware of the existence of this ad by the Sheraton Hotel:

Who the fuck was the marketing genius behind this? I’m guessing it’s someone who did not attend any of the schools shown in the video. As a USC guy, I can tell you that the dislike for UCLA come sporting time is genuine. During the year it’s not such a big deal, the schools are located pretty far apart from each other and when we ventured into Westwood we weren’t worried about UCLA students shooting us. But prior to a big football game or in recent years a competitive inter-conference basketball game, there was a whole different atmosphere. I can guarantee you that no real Trojans fan would hold open an elevator or go out of their way to do anything for a Bruin at one of these events. Same goes for the Bruins…and that’s the way it should be.

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Here is the game winning shot of USD over UConn.  Having been to both beautiful San Diego and horridly snobby and usually freezing and dreary Connecticut this outcome is the only fair and just outcome that could have happened:

Here is the shot that broke the heart of all us Drake die-hards:

Not more than 72 hours ago I listened to the words and advice of our esteemed colleague El G. Based on his advice I made my NCAA championship game pick. Here are my fateful words:

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# El Doctoron 19 Mar 2008 at 1:48 pm

A fantastic review. Well done El G.

After reading your review I have filled out my brackets and I have my championship game as Gonzaga vs. Drake.

Today Western Kentucky upset Drake with a buzzer beater in OT and Davidson upset Gonzaga. My bracket has been ruined and round 1 is not even over. Its almost as if I know nothing about and generally dislike the game of basketball.

Oh well, at least I got one prediction right (in principle):

I also have USC losing in the first round by 22. Sorry.

ZING!!!

Picking the winning bracket in your pool is a very difficult task. Fortunately there is a lot of history to analyze and pretty much every conceivable angle has been studied, broken down, analyzed, analyzed again, written about, discussed and so on and so forth. But even with all this data being readily available, people continue to fuck up their brackets.

Why? For starters everyone thinks they are a sports genius, they have the inside track on some team or some player, they know where all the upsets are going to happen or they want to impress their friends by picking some “sleepers.” The truth is, the teams earned their seeds for a reason. So no matter how frisky Cal State Fullerton looks, there is a reason they are the #14 seed and on the flip side, there is a reason Wisconsin is ranked #3. I am aware that the 14 seed has upset the 3 seed before, but historically speaking, the #3 seed wins 84% of the time. So there is an outside chance that your Fullerton pick will net you some points in the first round, but it’s a big risk and you have to keep in mind that winning your pool is not based on one game but rather the entire bracket…and mathematically speaking, you’re more likely to suit up for one of these teams than you are to correctly predict the outcome of every game.

That is a perfect jump off point for my “awesome winning list”

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I know that every other site on the web has made their NCAA bracket post, but I bucked the trend and waited until 10pm on Monday to write my first post.

I will make a few posts over the next few days in order to cover all my points.

• Will I have new and interesting insight? Probably not.
• Will there be a link to download a bracket? Most likely.
• Will there be an official “Hey Brewer Tournament Challenge?” Not unless I can come up with a cool prize for the winner
• Will I be ranting about USC drawing K-State in the opener? Most definitely
• Are you gonna read what I wrote? You should…after the jump

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A few links to look at while not doing work at your real job today:

An interesting story about 1/4 of the Cuban soccer team defecting so that they can tryout to play for MLS or USL teams. Political ideologies aside, you have to admire the guts it takes to walk away from your family, friends, and teammates to chase the dream of playing soccer (or baseball, whatever) professionally. Sadly, it appears they were horribly misinformed about the quality of soccer in the MLS.

Joe Girardi might miss the Yanks season opener due to a suspension from the ‘fight’ recently.

Baseball has been trying to expand to new markets, particularly in Asia. This continues again this year with exhibition games set to be played by the Dodgers and Padres in China this weekend and the regular season opening in Japan with Oakland taking on the Sawks. While baseball has taken off in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, there has been much less success in China.

Apparently a lot of Men’s Hoops teams hopes died yesterday. It would be a lie for me to say I gave two deuces but I know many of you do.  Baseball can’t start quick enough for me.

Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson was fired today in one of the biggest and most publicized college basketball recruiting scandals we have seen in quite some time.

After Indiana finally got rid of Bobby Knight, one of the winningest coaches in all of college basketball history, I must say I don’t feel too sorry for these guys. They ousted Bobby over some general BS (since when was yelling at or getting a little physical with a player really that big a deal?) replaced him with some other guy, and then hired a cheater.

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