Jim Scallon

I have no idea what I am doing when it comes to March Madness (yes, I bought a jersey and a basketball just for this picture).

After every game, I looked at my bracket and found more and more red. My heart sank when I checked the leaderboard and realized that I was dead last… out of 287 people. It was tragic– my pulse quickened and a bead of sweat rolled down my face when it hit me that history might just be repeating itself. I couldn’t get last place again, right? That would be the most embarrassing thing to ever happen. I thought about it for a while longer, and my nerves suddenly calmed. What if I got last place again? That would be the coolest thing to ever happen.

My dad is a huge college basketball fan, and every year he enters a 287-person March Madness bracket that consists of all of his friends from high school, all of his friends from college, all of their friends, and everybody’s kids. I am one of those kids. I’ve only been entered in the bracket for the last two years because, growing up, I was never really into basketball. The truth is, even though I thoroughly enjoy watching basketball, I still have no idea what I am doing. I’m utterly clueless about which teams to pick, and I also think it is hilarious to make absurd picks just for fun. Now that the tournament is over, I still think that my picks are hilarious, but I’m not exactly sure that I should be the one laughing. Long story short, I have gotten literally dead last place in a 287-person bracket two years in a row.

You might be wondering how it is even possible to achieve such a feat. “It must be so difficult to be the worst ever at sports betting,” you all say to yourselves. The truth is, it was actually rather easy. I mean, it only took me like a minute and a half to fill out my entire bracket! My strategy is extremely simple. Never have a 16 seed beating a 1 seed, that would just be ridiculous. However, you should always have a 15 seed beat a 2 seed because that is slightly less ridiculous. Never have higher than a 7 seed winning it all, because obviously a 10 seed is going to be the underdog comeback of the century one of these years, right? If you are thinking for more than five seconds over a certain pick, just choose one already, you don’t have all day! They say a 12 seed always beats a 5 seed, so pick every single 12 seed to beat every single 5 seed, because one of them is bound to be right. These are pretty specific rules, but the general idea is to pick every single upset except when you don’t feel like it (in my case, those always happen to be the upsets that occur).

This year, I picked Creighton to win the championship. When I tell people this, they often ask if I have a weird kind of allegiance to Creighton. The truth is, I had never once thought about Creighton until I had them winning. This isn’t to say that I don’t have a preferred team; I do. That team is TCU. Up until this point, I have always had TCU winning it all. A problem with my master strategy arose this year. TCU didn’t even make the playoffs. I don’t think that part is funny; it’s just plain humiliating. The team I always picked to be the #1 wasn’t even in the top 64. I was also recently informed that this tournament is not, in fact, called the playoffs. Why had no one told me these things?

I honestly had a great time this year during March Madness. I loved making my horrific bracket and losing to literally everyone. I will never understand why last place doesn’t get as much praise as first place, because I think it is just as impressive to be the worst as it is to be the best. Given the fact that this has happened two years in a row, is it possible that I’ve beaten the record for worst brackets in the world? Does everyone take this seriously except for me?

I think there are key takeaways from my experience. One, it is incredibly easy to be bad at March Madness: all you have to do is put zero effort in. Two, the true talent is never recognized (those that suck). Third, it is also incredibly easy to be good at March Madness. All you have to do is find my bracket and make the exact opposite picks. Statistically, you are guaranteed to get first place (that’s how statistics work, right?).