Weekly Wacko (21)
Bracket? I Hardly Know It!
It’s almost March Madness time, BABY! (That’s my Dick Vitale – who annoys the hell out of me, BABY!) I enjoy college basketball now, sort of. For example, last year I watched the final game between whoever and their opponent (go underdog!), BUT, I did arts and crafts while watching the game. Seriously.
I took construction paper and cut out giant numbers for a clock. Then I taped these numbers on my bathroom wall, and I gutted your simple, average school clock (the big white one with the black lettering) so that just the motor was left, and I taped that on the wall. Wha-la! Arts and crafts!
The most interested I ever was in a college basketball game I wasn’t attending (if I’m there all bets are off – I’m INTO it) was when I put 20 bucks on Boston College to beat somebody. I was in Vegas with the fam and let’s GOOOOOOO twenty bucks! BC lost. Stupid BC.
Anyhow, as a kid, I had even less interest (which is a very tiny amount of interest) in basketball. So what did I do when I was forced to fill out a bracket?
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I lived in Leavenworth, Kansas from the 3rd to 6th grades. Most of my friends there, and it seemed like a majority of the town, were crazy for Kansas. That is, the University of Kansas Jayhawks. There was the occasional fan for Kansas State, but mostly we were in Jayhawk territory.
That’s how it goes in a state with two big schools, you’ll find something similar in Arizona where you’ve got Arizona vs Arizona State.
Because people were crazy for Kansas, and Kansas was (and is) consistently a big contender in college basketball, people talked about college basketball.
I liked playing basketball with my family, and I did the very stereotypical boy thing of practicing buzzer beater shots in our driveyway.
“5 seconds Stanley’s coming down the court! 4 seconds! Stanley passes to … Stanley … 3 seconds! … he puts UP THE SHOT! … um … HE WAS FOULED! HE WAS FOULED! I CAN’T BELIEVE HE WAS FOULED!”
I have a great imagination, which really came in handy because I was (and am) a lousy shot. You wouldn’t think someone would be fouled while doing free throw shots at the very end of the game, but in my daydreams I was. Fouled over and over and over – until I made the shot.
Anyhow, the extent of my basketball knowledge was just how bad I was at basketball.
In gym, when brackets were passed out and EVERY (seemingly) boy around me got excited, I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t confident enough to clearly show my ignorance, and it really did feel like everyone knew what this bracket meant and who these teams were. I thought the best and most logical option was to pretend I knew exactly what I was doing.
“You put Gonzaga as advancing? Brad, I don’t know … do you know something?”
Um. Gonzaga sounds like a nickname for a part on a woman’s body? So I picked that? How do I explain my reasoning, when I have no reasoning?
I put Arizona as going all the way, because that was my dad’s favorite team. I had watched basketball, and it could be enjoying (the last few minutes at least), but for the most part it didn’t hold my interests. I’d rather be DOING something.
I looked at the bracket like it was a math problem, and people weren’t actually involved.
“The sixteenth ranked team against the first ranked team … well, obviously the first ranked team … unless it’s a trick …”
I turned in my bracket having confidence I would be out soon – and hope that the gym coach (or anyone) would throw it away without studying it.
“That Brad kid is amazing! He picked every losing team in the first round!”
This year my arts and crafts project while watching the game will be to do some collages of a sort. I’m a man’s man, and don’t you forget it.
DumbFunnery 