Boy was I wrong! Another round of analysis/paralysis commentary about all of the NCAA tournament picks. And, perhaps a chance to get out your pencils and erase any picks that you slept on and can't live with.
Welcome to the world of bracketology!
I'm a student who has not taken Joe Lunardi's online course at Saint Joseph's college. Here is more on my foray into bracketology--
On Becoming a Bracketologist
Published on March 13, 2011 at http://cforjustice.org/2011/03/13/on-becoming-a-bracketologist/
I find it conspicuous that none of the college basketball pundits are women or somebody’s mom like me. It’s about time.
By Mary Harvill
It took me a while to fall in love with basketball. When I grew up in Seattle, we were skiers, not basketballers, and that meant I was usually in the mountains on weekends, not in the bleachers. While I enjoyed weekday high school basketball games, it wasn’t until my stepdaughter played high school basketball for Saint George’s School in Spokane that I had a basketball awakening, so to speak.
The Superfans. Mary with her daughter Lesley earlier this season.
There is nothing like sitting in the stands at a basketball game. You can cheer the kids you know based upon their interactions with your kids, chit-chatting with other parents, meeting that guy sitting next to you, giving the other red-faced guy, whose veins are popping out of his neck, a dirty look because his cheering is getting out of control. The basketball bleachers are where the business of parenting and other things get done. Everything in the world stops for those 45 minutes (including half-time.) Hard work, hope, disappointment, joy and sorrow all happen in the gym.
Ultimately, what really drew me deeply into basketball world is my relationship with my daughter, Lesley. Lesley doesn’t play basketball, but she has lots of friends who do. She transferred to Gonzaga Prep (whose boys team just won the 2011 Washington state championship) at a time when both the boys and girls teams were ascending towards the top of their brackets. I entered this phase with Lesley as her chauffeur, transporting her to the games for her duties as the manager of the boys and girls teams at Saint George’s, then as a Super Fan when she transferred to G-Prep.
Lesley became a Super Fan for Ryan Nicholas, the G-Prep star player who now plays basketball for the University of Portland. Lesley also attends the University of Portland now and, thus, has continued her Super Fan relationship with Ryan. She would want you to know that her relationship with Ryan is “strictly business” and it involves a lot of creative work. She designs sparkly, colorful Super Fan shirts, makes cookies, provides Gatorade and other healthy snacks (Ryan is a health nut) and attends all of the Pilots’ home games to cheer him on. Ryan plays outstanding basketball and tells Lesley her cookies are his favorites. He’s also very polite, respectful, dedicated, hard working and a good student. As Lesley’s mom and a basketball fan, strictly business or not, why wouldn’t I love Ryan?
The part of me who is a committed basketball fan feels like I’ve graduated from high school too, because so many of my favorite high school players have moved on. Ryan at Portland, David Stockton (one of Ryan’s teammates) is now the go-to point guard at GU, and former Ferris star DeAngelo Casto is a rising star at WSU. Sean Fischer, a sharp shooter for G-Prep has shamefully languished on the bench at Eastern Washington University (EWU). The Eagles’ coach was fired a couple of weeks ago, so maybe Sean will see more playing time next year.
I did get down to Portland for a basketball game this year. Lesley cheerfully provided me with her “Purple Pride” t-shirt, I got to sit with her in the student section and the Pilots won the game. It doesn’t get any better than that.
But now comes March Madness. As I write this, Selection Sunday is only hours a way and I’m preparing my grid.
“I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this is obvious sexism is quaint or repulsive, but I should point out that the leading male basketball pundit, Dick Vitale (who does ridiculous TV commercials for “Hooters,”) is anything but eye candy. ‘Yeah, baby.’”
Okay, I can see that confused look on (most of) your faces. Chances are, unless you’re a guy, or the rare woman like me who follows NCAA basketball, you have no idea what I’m talking about.
Well, let me dribble you through it. Unlike the BCS college football championship (which is so screwed up that I can’t possibly explain it) the NCAA basketball championship is decided in what, this year, will be a 68 team tournament.
It is seeded like a big tennis tournament, so that the teams with the best records can avoid each other until the Final Four, assuming they all win their games. Conversely, teams with the least impressive records (they are frequently described as “on the bubble” as March Madness approaches) can expect to be pitted against one of the nation’s stronger teams. If you’re not into basketball you can completely miss the ritual triumphs and heartbreaks of a day on which bubble teams gather to watch large television screens, to see if they’re in and, if they’re in, who they play and in what corner of the country.
Along the way the games are marked by the milepost–the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight, the Final Four and then, of course, the championship game between the remaining two teams. The major brackets are assigned to four regions of the country, but it’s noteworthy that the distribution of the teams to the regional “brackets” is not regional–rather the system is used, as much as anything, to mix things up so that, say, conference rivals like Gonzaga and St. Mary’s would be sent to Atlanta or Philadelphia to play, say, Georgetown, or Butler. It’s not very eco-friendly, but it makes the host city very happy to have a chance to see a team from Spokane, Washington or Dubuque, Illinois.
I have decided that this year I’d like to start my journey toward becoming an accomplished bracketologist. It is one way I can pursue my personal interest in these teams (not only Portland, but the other teams on which my favorite players play) if only from afar.
You’re still looking at me funny. (I can tell.) But let me explain.
Bracketology is the science of having an astute opinion as to where teams ought to be seeded in the round of 68. It goes on from there. An astute bracketologist will not only have a thoughtful, seemingly educated opinion on who should be in and who should be out, but who will do well (or not well) against teams they are likely to play in their bracket. There is even a course taught at Saint Joseph’s University by the creator of bracketology, Joe Lunardi, who is ESPN’s resident bracketologist. Hours of television alone are taken up by these bracketology discussions.
I find it conspicuous that none of the college basketball pundits are women or somebody’s mom like me. The female, on-the-court interviewers for ESPN and the like are young, attractive, preferably with blonde hair like Erin Andrews. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this obvious sexism is quaint or repulsive, but I should point out that the leading male basketball pundit, Dick Vitale (who does ridiculous TV commercials for “Hooters,”) is anything but eye candy. “Yeah, baby.”
I have a blog http://maryharvill.blogspot.com (with 2 followers) though I don’t blog regularly. I watch the games. I have opinions. I participate in the national game of completing a NCAA bracket, bemoaning teams that lose screwing up my bracket. I also compete with other members of the Harvill family in our own league during the tournament, to determine who is the smartest and most savvy college basketball champion in picking the team that ultimately wins the NCAA tournament.
My sister-in-law works for the University of Maryland, so I learned early on to cheer for the “Terps” (it’s short for Terrapin, which is a small, edible, fresh water turtle) and to “fear the turtle,” replete with yearly t-shirts. Maryland won the national championship the day before my wedding to Linda’s “bro.” That certainly started our marriage off on the right footing, the basketball gods smiling broadly upon us.
Last year I watched the picks from local watering hole Jack and Dan’s thinking the bar would be packed with Gonzaga fans awaiting the results. Sadly, there were very few people there, though a KREM-2 news crew and photographer from the Spokesman-Review arrived to interview and take pictures of fans and get “man in the street” color commentary for the evening news broadcast. These people probably looked more like bracketologists than I do. When I asked the photographer where everybody was, he said they were likely at a post-pick press conference at the Arena. I thought maybe the team was over at Coach Mark Few’s house as was customary in the past. The GU students were assembled in the SUB in front of their jumbo-tron TV ready to cheer for Gonzaga when their selection was announced and the news crew cameras were turned on.
I have my grid. In offices across America, including law firms, everyone will be contributing to the office pool, cheering for their teams, secretly watching games live online, stealing bandwidth from computer networks and maintaining lower productivity, all to keep up on the latest turn of events in THE tournament.
There will be plenty of discussion among the men. Sometimes women like me who follow the tournament will be included, sometimes not. So I select the location of my lunch break carefully, selecting restaurants with a nice bar atmosphere and TV tuned to the games so I can quietly follow along, the men be damned.
As my career in bracketology is new I have only the family competition to think about. If I win the family competition, all the t-shirts come to me. Everyone else wants to win, so they will get a Gonzaga t-shirt from me (t-shirts are the grand prize). This year, I want a University of Portland t-shirt.
It’s a modest start, I know. But I’m shooting for the moon, setting my goal to get some serious face time on CBS and ESPN as America’s first Mom of Bracketology. Alaska had a “First Dude”so why not a First Mom of Bracketology? I probably gotta get some “street cred”so I don’t end up as an amusing sideshow with the media corps.
But, hey, bring it on. When I squint and touch my nose on camera, that will be my little hello signal to all of you who’ve read this.
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