It's Madness Baby!

Let the Madness begin!

Image courtesy of espn.com

Did you get your brackets filled out before the big tip offs this afternoon? I was scrambling a little bit this morning, but got mine completed by the deadline. Our office always does a pool, and the past few years we've done a family pool as well. And since we're family, we get a little bit more creative with the wagers than just simple cash. Last year we teamed up as couples to determine rankings and "prizes": the couple that placed third had to cook dinner for everyone, the last place couple had to do all the dishes, the second place couple had to provide the drinks, and the first place couple got to sit back and enjoy it all. I'm sure we'll end up doing something similar this year, although nothing has been officially decided.

Usually I have no issue getting my brackets filled out in time, and I've been know to whip out three or four different brackets for different pools because I always end up filling them out on a whim. I decided to put a little more effort into my picks this year and set out researching the teams Sunday night after the bracket was released, hoping that I would be able to improve my predictions. Well, it turned out that after all of my research, the teams I was expecting to win were consistently the teams with the higher rankings. Apparently my research wasn't any more enlightening than the research the bracket committees do to place and rank the teams. So my bracket ended up being loosely based on my research and mostly based on the gut reactions I had toward the teams as I was researching them. We'll see how well that works out; as long as I make it to the Final Four with more than one team left, though, I'll have improved from last year!