About 8 months ago I bought a photo cube at Office Depot for one dollar. That's one of the benefits of working for Office Depot, you go in and out of the stores so much that you can quickly glace at all the clearance racks and grab the super great deals before anyone else notices. (In fact we got a really nice chair there for $12 this past month, but that's a story for another time...a time when I need to break some future akward silence by bragging about a chair deal I got several months back...boy is that going to be one uncomfortable silence.)
Anyway, Carrie finally got around to putting the thing together and It's a pretty nice toy. Basically it's a cube that has pictures of Cami at every angle, then you can open it up to reveal even more pictures of Cami. It's pretty fun and within minutes of it's completion the cube has already skyrocketed to the top of my Mom's Christmas/Birthday wishlist.
You may be asking yourself why the cube story matters. First off, you know you're dying to read these little "slice of life" stories that make blogs worth reading? Second, and most importantly the cube serves as a basis for my latest and greatest bad analogy.
See, the NCAA Tournament this year is like our photo cube. Look at it from the outside and you think you see the whole picture, but fiddle with it a little and you discover there is a whole lot more to the picture that you couldn't see of first glace. ( pause to savor that profound moment)
Each year I have certain rules I go by to fill out my bracket ( Always pick at least two #12 seeds to win, Never go with more than 6 upsets in the first round, always pick the team playing within 3 hours of campus to win, never pick a team that starts 5 white guys to advance more than one round unless their name is "Duke".) However, this year I hate my rules. Going by nothing but tried and true principles I have Texas beating UNC in the championship game. This is never going to happen. my gut doesn't even like Texas to get out of the sweet 16. I have no desire to cheer for Texas and I would be mildly depressed having to pull for them for three straight weeks.
This brings up another horrible bracket problem, When the team you naturally root for has no chance of advancing, so you pick against them in your bracket and then you have put yourself in the worst position a fan can get into. I call it Pete Rose Memorial Bet Against Your Team Syndrome (PRMBAYTS for short) , and it sucks. Let's say you support the BYU Cougars (just to pick a random team, just for kicks) and you just watched your team fritter away another Mountain West Tourniment. You've seen this all before, you know it's the first step in BYU having a nice first half in their NCAA game followed by a more athletic team wearing them down in the second half, their shooting gets ice-cold, then they manage to lose a game that was by all accounts winnable. There is no way on earth that this scenario doesn't play out on Thursday, however the joy of picking Texas A&M and getting a lousy extra point in your bracket does nothing to salve the pain of watching BYU get bounced in the first round and knowing it was coming the whole time. Still, you want that point because more than a BYU victory you need to prove your personal superiority in the 10 bracket pools that you participate in. Now, assume the impossible happens and BYU wins. You're extremely excited but you feel like a complete tool for not having them in your bracket. You can't celebrate with your boys because you don't believe in them, because you denied them ten times to one hundred different people on both paper and in cyberspace. You feel like garbage all because you sold your soul for a lousy point. That's no way to win a bracket contest...but constantly losing to your wife in the bracket contest is no way to go through life either.
I can't for sure say how I'm going to fill out this bracket. Considering I'm throwing out my entire playbook on how to do this and I'm obviously dealing with several personal issued connected to fanhood this could be a long process. However I am willing to go through the torture of these impossible choices because at the end of the rainbow is four solid days of basketball where I have a personal, emotional, and possible financial interest in every single one of those games. Highs and lows coming sometimes at the same time and a reason to cheer and get crazy which is worth a little bit of grief. It guess it's just all in how you look at it.
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2 comments:
sure wish i could fly up and watch march madness with you. you rock.
Chris I enjoy reading your posts. . . this is Rachel by the way. . . but I must comment on some of your thoughts. (My husband would get mad at me and think I'm a dork probably if he saw what I am saying by the way) While BYU did miss some chances in the second half of that championship game and didn't play their best AT ALL, I think more of it had to do with the fact that it was in reality the "Rebel Classic Invitational" more than the MWC Tournament. Home court played a HUGE part in that game - not to mention also in the UNLV/TCU game which UNLV NEVER should have won in the first place. Because home court advantage plays such a huge part in basketball I feel that it really is not as big of a chance that BYU beats A&M than you think. #1 the game is in Anaheim where BYU will likely be able to pull in a lot of fans to support them. Likely more than A&M. #2 BYU is a more consistent team than A&M. #3 I feel that this BYU team is actually a lot more athletic than you think. . . certainly more athletic than most BYU teams. Anyway, we are so excited for all the games to start! And by tonight I just hope we aren't all depressed because BYU loses yet again another close game that they SHOULD have won.
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