Wednesday, March 18, 2009

My Bracket Baby


My daughter was born on the second day of the 2008 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament (March Madness) and for that reason alone loves basketball. Early research shows that her affinity is for the men's version alone but only time will tell. Well, on Sunday my daughter filled out a bracket. My wife and I put the logos of the two teams for each game on the monitor and had her pick the winner. Sometimes she pointed at the logo, other times she stared at the logo and occasionally she would try to grab the keyboard. Needless to say it took a long while for us to put the bracket together.

We filmed the entire selection process and if my wife ever decided to get a PhD (I'd love to be a stay-at-home dad but she has no interest in going back to school) she should use it. There is likely a lot of rich data that some dork would love to see. Did she prefer logos on the left or right? What colors were chosen the most? Did she hate logos that had text in them? All I can figure out is that my daughter loves bears, no matter how scary they look.

My wife's family has a bracket set up on a website that shall remain nameless and I wasted no time posting my daughter's bracket on there. Since I have lost to my wife every year we have been married I had to guarantee myself not finishing last. Without further ado, here are the bright spots of my daughter's bracket:
  • East Tennessee State, Radford, CSU Northridge, Cornell, American and Mississippi State will at least win one game.
  • Mississippi State and Cornell will meet in the Elite Eight.
  • Western Kentucky and Siena will make it to the Elite Eight.
  • Kansas, Cornell, Clemson and UCLA will be in the Final Four. (I picked all four to lose in the first round.)
  • Kansas will defeat Clemson to repeat as champions.