Bracket racket

One man's quest to rule the pool

This is my year, I can feel it. This is the year when all my hunches turn to gold, when all my coin-flip games fall the right way, when I don't miss a single turn on the road to the Final Four. This is the year I correctly call so many upsets, Pepto-Bismol offers me an endorsement deal. I am going to be the Prince of Predictions, the Sultan of Selections, the Boss of Bracketville. This is the year I rule the pools.

I refer, of course, to the NCAA Tournament pools, which sprout like tulips all across the country this time of year. I'm going to enter every one I possibly can. If a Web site or newspaper offers a pool, it will have my picks. I'm going to get in on office pools in offices I don't even work in. That's how confident I am that this is my year.

Granted, I've felt this confidence before. Every year, in fact. The truth is, it has never been my year. Once, I was foolish enough to publish my picks in a newspaper column. I predicted that Virginia Tech would reach the Sweet 16, and the Hokies lost their first-round game so fast, I think they were back on campus and had cut two classes by the time I'd finished writing the piece.

But that was then and this is now. With apologies to my colleague Stewart Mandel, who provides a primer in bracketology right here, I have a new strategy this March that goes light on analysis and heavy on gut feeling. I don't care about RPI, or road wins or how a team attacks the matchup zone. This year is all about personal, sometimes irrational, preferences.

First, I must have either a hyphenated school or a compass college winning a first-round game. A compass college is also known as a directional school, such as East Tennessee State, Western Kentucky or Southern Illinois. But I don't feel good about those teams' matchups this year, so I'm going with one of the hyphens in the tourney. Sorry, Notre Dame, but Wisconsin-Milwaukee is coming to get you.

Second, I trust in karma. Oklahoma built up a ton of the good kind by eliminating Texas Tech in the Big 12 tournament thus making sure Bob Knight, the Red Raiders coach, doesn't get to menace the event that really counts. Earlier in the season, I went to Lubbock to do a story on how Knight had turned Tech's program around, and school officials waited until I got to town to inform me that neither Knight -- who doesn't appreciate some of the things that have been written about him in Sports Illustrated and on SI.com -- nor anyone else in the program would consent to an interview. So thanks to Oklahoma for knocking Knight out, and I'm picking the Sooners to reach the Final Four. Hey, Coach Knight, you've heard of that SI jinx? It's real.

I normally make it a practice to select the school I know the least about. This year that would be IUPUI, which looks like a misprint atop the Midwest bracket. I'm guessing that IUPUI stands for, It's a University Perpetually Under Investigation. No, wait. That's Fresno State. Whatever IUPUI is, (I'm told it's Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, to which I say, huh?) as a 16th seed against the team I believe is going to win it all, Kentucky, I can't quite bring myself to pick it.

But I can see I've said too much already. I'm not one of those "experts" who trumpets his Final Four schools for all to hear. You want to see the rest of my picks? You'll have to ante up in the pool, baby. (I'm sorry, March Madness makes me talk like Dick Vitale.) But yes, in addition to being my year, it's going to be Kentucky's, too.

Unless the Wildcats have already lost by the time you read this.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on SI.com.

 

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