Making a fast break from productivity

(From Register-Pajaronian)

Whooo! It’s that time of year again! Time to put the brisket in the basket and let the horse out of the barn, baby! Time to body up in the paint and shank one from downtown!

Giving you an excuse once again to neglect your children between the Super Bowl and baseball season, it’s March Madness!

Sure, act like you don’t care. The numbers don’t lie, my friend. Studies have shown time and time again that up to $3 billion changes hands each year in betting on the NCAA basketball championships. Las Vegas casinos report seeing less than $100 million of that, which means the good old-fashioned office pool costs the American workingman more than Tom DeLay and Jeb Bush holding a referendum on gerrymandering at a Dubai massage parlor during tourist season. Experts say someone in your family has already made a wager on the tournament, and if it isn’t you, maybe you and your wife need to talk.

Of course, office pools are generally illegal, so if your boss hasn’t signed up, you’re going to want to be sure you don’t leave that envelope full of $20 bills and the list of participants just laying around on your desk. Sudden redistribution of capital makes The Man nervous.

Here at the R-P, a lot of that wealth is going to get redistributed to the Matt Farley Heat and Food Fund, a program started last year to help underprivileged editors live on the beach while evading their creditors, no matter what anyone says. See, I have an angle on this whole March Madness thing that simply can’t lose: I don’t follow basketball.

All these roundball fans get caught up in average minutes played and field goal percentages. While I understand the value of stats, it is possible that something could happen in a game without representing a new trend in the sport:

Commentator 1: "Well, Chris, the Crocs have never made it to the Big Dance when they were seeded greater than 4 and less than 9 when a point guard whose last name began with a vowel other than ‘A’ scored less than 7 points in the second round. I just don’t like their chances in this one."

Commentator 2: "Gotta disagree with you there, Steve. I think you’re forgetting about the ’87 squad. Jack Ericson put up just 5 points in the second round that year, and we all know how that turned out. But the question is, can Reshawn Ingalls break the Consonant Curse again this year, or will the Crocs be wrestled back into the swamp by the Voles’ strongman center Alex Tikimanuatu? That answer, and a lot of footage of sorority girls half your age, straight ahead."

Another problem I have with tracking stats is that there are roughly half a million college basketball teams in the country, and they let almost all of them into the tournament, and there are so many numbers to track that even the most enthusiastic fans don’t actually know what’s going on. Seriously, in real sports, a battle among 64 teams isn’t the playoffs, it’s opening day. Twice.

So, much like Barry Bonds in a press conference, I tried not to let the facts bog me down when I was making my picks this year. The first thing I considered is that most mascots in the NCAA are either wildcats or a guy with a big mustache, and I would select neither as long as I could help it. I’ve always thought teams at all levels needed more original mascots, and I’m still mad that the Jaguars and Panthers came into the NFL in the same season. It’s not enough to name a multi-million-dollar enterprise after a Little League team, you’ve got to do it twice in the same year using the same stupid mascot?

If I’m going to pick a team based on its mascot, it’s got to be original. The Boston College Eagles? Eh. The Wichita State Shockers? Oh hell yeah!

As you may know, I graduated from No. 5 seed Nevada. This presents an interesting philosophical question: Can I be totally disgusted with a school’s disastrous mismanagement and still cheer on its basketball program? I compromised and gave them an early win.

March Madness proves the inescapable fact that a man is capable of doing an amazing amount of work as long as it’s not the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. For instance, if I had applied as much strategery to this column as I have into my brackets, I probably wouldn’t be blowing my deadline right now. Over at the sports desk, I can only trust that the guys are using the vast resources at their disposal to make their work better, not to figure out whom to pick in the Arkansas-Bucknell game. And behind office doors throughout the building, men in ties are furiously scribbling away, muttering, "OK, so Farley picked Nevada in the first round..."