Succumbed to Bracket Fever...But I Quickly Recovered

As I had written in last Monday's article, I wasn't very enthusiastic about jumping on board the "bracket express" regarding the NCAA men's basketball tournament, which has just begun.  Savvy businessman and generally very rich guy Warren Buffet offered a billion dollars to anyone who got all of their picks on their bracket correct, along with $100,000 to each of those with the twenty best brackets.  And I was going to forgo filling out a bracket in spite of this lucrative offer, which wouldn't have cost me anything other than a few minutes of my time.  But Facebook made it too easy yesterday...

I happened to be on Facebook when lo and behold, there was an advertisement for Buffet's bracket offer (sponsored by Quicken Loans).  All I had to do was click on the button they provided, open a Yahoo account, fill out the bracket, and submit it...all free of charge.   This bracket offer didn't include the first four games...just the field of 64, with today's games beginning the whittling down process.  And the whittling down of eligible "bracketeers" hit my own home early: when I awoke this afternoon, I had already discovered I was a billion bucks poorer when I found out that, against my predictions, Harvard had upset Cincinnati and Dayton had done likewise with Ohio State.  Still, it was fun while it lasted. Which turned out to be not very long at all.

I can still have some fun with my bracket by seeing how far the teams I picked to do well can get in the tournament.  In my Elite Eight version of the games, Florida defeats Syracuse, Virginia defeats North Carolina, Wisconsin defeats Arizona, and Louisville defeats Duke to give the Final Four field.  My championship game has Florida winning over Louisville 66-62.  So far, this is all possible, although my #1 seeded Gators seem to be experiencing a degree of difficulty putting away #16 seed Albany right now...