In the Cards?

After losing my Fulbright funding and feeling generally crappy for a while, I decided to get back into the global economy the old-fashioned way: by gambling. Let’s face it—there was no other option. After all, I’m from Connecticut, home of two of the largest and most-profitable casinos in the world. Foxwoods’ slot-machine revenue funded some of my high-school education. My brother-in-law (I feel kind of weird writing that … let’s just call him Cortlandt) is just coming off a spring-break trip to Ireland funded by online poker. He’s a junior in college. And most importantly, the NCAA tournament was about to start. It had to be done.

I could have gone all out and bet on the games individually or put down some green (or blue or orange, depending on the denomination of bolívares) on Carolina to go the whole way. Instead, I decided to go the traditional, no-chance-in-hell-of-winning-anything route. I entered a couple of NCAA office pools.

I know, I know. You can’t win. There’s always too many people, or too many upsets you didn’t see (Vermont beats Syracuse? After that was the annual “First-round upset that people want to happen and throw in their brackets but that never actually happens”?), or too many blown calls and idiotic coaching to actually make you look smart. Despite all this, and despite the frustration of coming in the top five of Baseball America’s pool last year, with some silly first-round picks robbing me of the title (and the cash), I entered two different pools: once again into the BA pool (with one bracket for me and one for my dad and brother), and another with my father-in … er, Gary’s company.

Normally I don’t like having too many brackets, if only because there’s a dilemma on how to fill them in and how to watch the games. There are some options here, none of which are that great: you can spread out the love and change picks for each of the brackets, thus optimizing your chances (or giving yourself the opportunity to lose in various ways), or you can have identical brackets to try to win twice (and eventually crash and burn in the second round and have nothing to look forward to for the rest of the tourney). Or you can keep the same Final Four teams but change around some of the first-round upsets and early exits of the other favored teams.

I decided to spread it out this year, figuring that I needed a better chance to win some money, any money. So in Gary’s pool, I went with upsets, and my Final Four looked like this: Oklahoma State, UNC, Syracuse and Wake Forest. In the BA pool, I went with reason, and it looked like this: Illinois, UNC, Syracuse and Louisville. As you can imagine, I’m out of the suegro’s pool, but still very much in the BA tourney.

It’s funny. There’s another guy in the Baseball America pool named Brad who had the exact same score as me going into Sunday night. He had Illinois, UNC, Louisville … and Kentucky, who was playing Michigan State. With a Kentucky win, the best I could do would be second. With an MSU win, I could tie Brad for first and head straight to the tiebreaker. I’ve never cheered for Sparty and the gang so much in my life.
So now there are four people left in the BA pool, and according to the trusty computer on the BA pool Web site, all Condi's Castoff needs to tie for first is a Louisville win against Illinois. Improbable? Yes. Possible? Fifty percent possible, to be exact. If the Cardinals win, then we tie.

Then it gets interesting. The championship would be between Louisville, a high-scoring team, and UNC or MSU, both high-scoring teams. One would expect a high-scoring game. I did, and do, and put 164 points as my tiebreaker. Brad jotted down 135. For me to win some $620, all I need is a total of 150 points between the two teams. A 76-74 Carolina win, for example. An 80-70 Louisville walk over the Spartans.

That’s all I need. If only there were no Web site for this pool. If only I weren’t a bit obsessive when it comes to thinking about the tourney. If only the Cards would win Saturday night.