March Madness,the Madness of Picking Winners & Humility!

I don’t know why I even bother. I don’t really like the sport. It’s not something that I’m normally interested in watching. Basketball, much like baseball and something called NASCAR (a sport, I’m told), are mere diversions before THE real sport starts again in the fall — FOOTBALL. I love watching America’s game (baseball maybe American’s “pastime”, but it’s not its present time) and can’t wait until the college and NFL games commence. I’m not sure who I will root for come September, given the drama and (apparent) dishonest dealings by the Broncos towards Tim Tebow. But, I will watch. I might even play fantasy football this year.

I’ve got to have a better chance at picking a fantasy football team than I have at picking winners in this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. A blind squirrel could do a better job of me in filling out a bracket for March Madness. I know just enough about the game to be dangerous. I care even less. That’s why it borders on ridiculous for me to have even entered into Yahoo’s Fantasy Sports Tourney PICK’EM.

But, against my better judgment — that judgment being the fact that I would look completely inept in my powers of prognostication when it comes to choosing the actual winners of the games in this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament — I entered our church’s March Madness group. With 18 contestants, I figured I had a pretty good chance of being somewhere in the middle of the pack. I was. Until the end of Thursday. It was then that my Student Pastor, Jon, and I both were tied for LAST place. It was his idea to even create this group and invite church members to play. If I were a conspiracy theory wackadoodle (Jon introduced me to that word — a great word, by the way), I would think that this was a set-up from the very beginning.

From most of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I alone was in LAST place, thanks to some of my sterling picks — Notre Dame (I NEVER pick ND for anything, but I did this time for some inexplicable reason) and SEC teams like Vanderbilt and Alabama (thanks a lot). By the end of competition on Sunday night, I had managed to secure a solid 17th place. I could have been higher had my FSU Seminoles not completely tanked in the second round. I had them in my Final Four, but at least I had North Carolina beating them in the semi-finals. Who says I’m not loyal?

I hold onto a slim hope that the University of Florida Gators can pull off another run at the title. If they go down in flames, then all is lost and my ineptness in picking winners and losers in basketball tournaments will be confirmed for one more year. But, on the bright side, Jon assures me that our cellar-dwelling ways are gracious attempts to show humility while allowing others to have preferred (and much, much higher) positions ahead of us. If When I end up last in this year’s March Madness challenge, that’s gonna be my story and I’m sticking to it!