Not quite the way I feel, but a fitting quote (from Meet Me in St. Louis) considering this is the season of anguish for so many sports fans. For yea, now is the time of the NCAA Basketball tournament. Millions upon millions of brackets filled out by masochistic dreamers, hoping to get it all right. Many moons ago, back when the world was young, I actually won a pool by filling out a bracket for a professor at NSU. But make no mistake, boys and girls: the Gods of College Basketball hate my living guts. Whatever bracket I fill out is doomed to fail. That sweet taste of victory years ago was just a way of setting me up for the long, long fall that was to come. Aeschylus himself couldn't have written a more gripping tale of tragedy and woe.
They say that the first four days of the tournament belong to a few surprise teams, the little guys who take down also-rans from big conferences and gut their way to the Sweet Sixteen to the delight of media and fans alike. After that, the power teams reassert themselves and bend things more to their will. We haven't really seen the makings of that so far today. Wisconsin-Milwaukee did beat Oklahoma, but W-M made the Sweet Sixteen last year, so it's not like they're doormats. Two major upsets were avoided when Tennessee got a late jumper to hold off 15 seed Winthrop, and Boston College (the institution fortunate enough to be attended by my good friend Kerrie for four years) outlasted Pacific in double overtime. BC came on strong at the end of the year, and many people have them causing significant damage in the tournament. Had they lost today, there would have been much weeping and gnashing of teeth, outside of Boston as well as within.
The Mighty Demons of NSU play Iowa early tomorrow afternoon. I checked the brackets of the people in my office, and one girl picked NSU to win. I went over to congratulate her on such a wonderful pick, and she told me how she had friends who went there and always liked the school, so she decided to pick them. I knew then that she was confusing us with the Northwestern in Illinois. I think she still thinks I went to LSU since I'm from Louisiana. I also checked the picks in another pool, and the lovely and oh-so-intelligent wife of my boy Corey has NSU making the Sweet Sixteen. What a nice girl.
Corey and I had a short exchange with the following gist: His wife does not follow college basketball or sports in general, and will end up winning the pool. Of course, I take this for granted. Bracket geeks across the country will tell horror stories of office pools won by secretaries and assistants who pick the games based on uniform color, mascots, or whether or not the cheerleaders are all the same height. (I actually doubt any of this is true, but who knows for sure?) Anyway, I made the point that we (me, Corey, basketball fans, etc) don't fill out brackets trying to beat his wife. We fill them out trying to beat each other, knowing that his wife is going to win.
You know the really sad part? I've used this blog to write about race, religion, politics, movies, sports, and a few other things, but part of me thinks that last statement is the most insightful and intelligent thing yet.
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