{"id":888,"date":"2015-03-20T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T13:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/?p=888"},"modified":"2015-03-20T09:00:47","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T13:00:47","slug":"so-busted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/?p=888","title":{"rendered":"SO BUSTED"},"content":{"rendered":"

The trajectory of my NCAA\u00a0tournament picks year over year is pretty much the same, and this explains why\u00a0I haven’t put up a stake for a pool in the past 15 years.\u00a0I am a\u00a0purist, and I play the Full Bracket<\/strong> (none of this Bayesian round-by-round fluff). Beginning with the greatest of\u00a0expectations, my picks, more right than wrong at the start, soon\u00a0regress to chance or worse. The hardest part is that I can see the train wreck coming and I am powerless to do anything about it.<\/p>\n

Only halfway through the First Round<\/strong>, the proverbial writing is on the wall. Because the points accrued are weighted, and subsequent rounds are worth more points, my mistakes in the early going have grim repercussions down the road. Georgia State’s upset of Baylor will sting\u00a0as far as\u00a0the Sweet Sixteen <\/strong>and UCLA’s upset of Iowa State will haunt my bracket all the way\u00a0into the\u00a0Elite Eight<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I begin the tournament every year\u00a0believing that this is the\u00a0year <\/em><\/strong>the astronomical odds Gods will shine on my humble bracket and that outrageous fortunes will follow from my auspicious acumen for picking winners and losers. It has been suggested, however, that for mere mortals brackets are made to be busted so that we may commiserate with one another. The empirical evidence is that misery loves miserable company.\"imagesOSEWJBAW\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The\u00a0heartbreak of defeat can be\u00a0redoubled when my alma mater is involved. I know\u00a0I should not choose them to keep\u00a0winning until they reach the\u00a0 Final Four<\/strong>.\u00a0Yet, I am helpless when it comes to betting against them, dear old Virginia<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Hark! I hear that train a comin’!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The trajectory of my NCAA\u00a0tournament picks year over year is pretty much the same, and this explains why\u00a0I haven’t put up a stake for a pool in the past 15 years.\u00a0I am a\u00a0purist, and I play the Full Bracket (none of this Bayesian round-by-round fluff). Beginning with the greatest of\u00a0expectations, my picks, more right than … Continue reading SO BUSTED<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}