No one wants to hear about your weird dreams, no one wants to
hear about your fantasy football team, and, during the month of
March, no one wants to hear about your bracket
No one wants to hear about your weird dreams, no one wants to hear about your fantasy football team, and, during the month of March, no one wants to hear about your bracket. At least I don’t.
If someone does listen to what you have to say about your bracket, it’s only because they’re waiting for a chance to talk about their bracket. By that point, though, the person who spoke about their bracket first has already achieved what they wanted out of the conversation and will tune out the person who has the second chance to speak.
The self-congratulatory nature of bracketology is an extension of everything that’s wrong with sports. It lowers your Average Joe into something disgusting, something loathsome — think Jay Mariotti, think Skip Bayless. The idea that someone knew Cleveland State was for real, like it was the savvy choice over Wake Forest, is about as absurd as the person who feels vindicated by profiting five dollars on lottery scratchers after wasting hours dragging a penny across waxed paper.
Women in the office will cluck over their good fortune in picking teams based on mascots, uniform colors or associations to schools through nieces and nephews, while some men like to admit they haven’t been paying attention to college basketball much this year, but only an idiot didn’t realize Arizona was legit.
Digger Phelps might be the worst part of March Madness. The embarrassing dancing incident aside — when Phelps did a creepy impersonation of Kevin Spacey in American Beauty by dancing with cheerleaders like a drunken uncle at a wedding — Phelps proves there really is nothing more pathetic than old men using gimmicks to give their expert opinion on sports.
Everyone already knows Lee Corso is on shaky ground and humors his helmet/mascot head gear when picking a winner on College Game Day. People clap, people cheer — it’s kind of like the hospital orderly high-fiving the elderly patient after successfully eating applesauce. But Phelps’ matching color highlighter and tie — now known as the tielighter — isn’t just stupid, it’s distracting. It’s difficult to focus on his points when he’s waving a lime green highlighter — who the hell even needs a highlighter to be on TV anyway? — which looks slightly less ridiculous than a lime green tie.
I’ll take a surly Bobby Knight, cashing in with a sweater sponsored by some auto parts company, sitting in studio and just waiting to snap on a stupid question by the Sportscenter anchor du jour. Knight might be part of the media now, but that doesn’t mean he’s scared to dress down some wannabe Jeremy Schapp and send him back to the Suzy Kolber School of Annunciation.
Ask Bobby Knight how his bracket looks and he’ll probably stare a hole through you before pulling out his shotgun to clean it. A little aggressive, sure. But it’s honest. At least you know he doesn’t want to hear about your bracket.
