NCAA Pride [sins]

Now that Lent’s over, we can all go back to our favorite sins. Throughout the year, I try to maintain a relatively even spread of the Seven Deadlies, which I think makes for a well-rounded person. For example, yesterday I celebrated Easter by binging on dollops pf peanut butter and honey on top of an endless flow of saltines. I only stopped when the peanut butter ran out.

But I do have my favorite sins. And, today, in the wake of a surprising number of NCAA tournament upsets, I am reminded again of a particularly delicious opportunity to roll around feeling superior to other people. Since I had to come to work today, I’ve taken advantage of the fact that other people also are forced to be around me and listen to me talk — at length — about how truly brilliant my bracket picks were.

Who would’ve picked West Virginia to upset Duke? Oh, yeah, well, I did. How far did YOU have Duke going? Man, that sucks for you…

If you aren’t familiar with the nuances involved in this exquisitely intricate sin, Pride is particularly melts-in-your-mouth tasty when it’s entirely undeserved. Given my knowledge of basketball, I apply about as much knowledge and skill to filling out an NCAA bracket as you’d use on a scratch-off lottery ticket. The process, for myself and the vast majority of bracket-filler-outers, is depicted below:

Taking pride in doing well on an NCAA bracket also makes about as much sense for me and others like me, but I/we still FEEL brilliant for having called the upset. Let alone the fact that the rest of my bracket — like most people’s in a year with a good chunk of upsets — is in total shambles. Given the number of knowledgeless idiots like myself out there, it’s pretty basic stats that some of us are riding high today.

In general, it’s probably true that people without any current knowledge of the various teams/players/coaches/rules tend to pick MORE upsets than people who know what’s what — otherwise filling out the bracket doesn’t allow you to enjoy feeling like a basketball savant if one of your upsets plays out. Nevermind the six that didn’t.

And that’s the perennial joy of the NCAA tournament for the NCAA clueless, coming on the heels of Lent as it does: some percentage of those of us who didn’t see or hear of a regular season game will always strut in having picked a key upset.

If all the wallowing in your office gets bad today, you might want to page ahead to my next post on the Seven Deadlies, because I intend to explore how, unlike Pride, the exercise of Wrath is much much more enjoyable when it’s entirely warranted.

N.B. — Because of E’s passion, I picked Memphis to go all the way.