march madness!

in response to the invitation of my friend j, i decided to fill out my bracket for this year's ncaa basketball tournament. my group is a bunch of stanford friends, along with their spouses and children. i noted when i filled out the bracket that there was a $5 million prize for anyone who managed to predict the entire tournament correctly -- and i thought to myself, wouldn't it be amazing if i somehow won that?

the thought didn't last long. i quickly found myself in 12th place -- in a group of 12 players (we also included the baseline bracket for a total of 13). my predictive prowess was lower than everyone's kids and even the friend who chose all of her teams based on the mascots! good thing i haven't tried to make a living as a professional gambler...

so what exactly happened? well, i chose pac-10 teams as some of my upset specials, picking usc and oregon to go to the final 8. both were eliminated in the first round. so much for pac-10 dominance. duke, a #2 seed that i had going all the way to the final four, was also upset in the first round. my midwest bracket was a disaster, as i missed on 4 of the 8 games in the first round; i might have done better flipping a coin! to sum up: i wasted no time in demonstrating my knowledge of ncaa basketball!

the one redeeming feature of my bracket: stanford is still in the tournament. if, somehow, they manage to win the whole thing, i vault to the top of my group's standings, and in the words of our group commissioner, "blow everyone away." not surprisingly, i'm rooting hard for the good guys!