homegame

Ode to Wichita State, Florida Gulf Coast, La Salle, etc.

It is an iron law that gambling pools must have winners. Otherwise, who'd play? The impossible-to-estimate large number of plungers who enter NCAA tournament bracket pools each March means that somewhere out there in this great land of ours is at least one impossibly smug guy or gal who's going to have four of their Final Four picks right at the close of business this evening. The deserved hatred he or she or them will receive from everyone they know will be their real payoff. That's just the law of probabilities.

But the law of probabilities is a wide-ranging statute. It applies even more rigorously to failure than to success. And it says there will be many many more lucky pool winners in this great land of ours whose luck will stem from the fact they took home the money with a record-low point total.

I won't be one of 'em. I made my one per lifetime win quota years ago. But there were years at the Herald pool where I'd have, oh, the winner, the runner-up, and all but one Final Four pick right and finish way up the track. In 2013, there will be pools won by participants who failed to pick the winner, and had the highest point total because they had Syracuse in the Final Four or some other minimally successful guess.

Oh,well, it's only money. Too bad we can't be like coaches. Their reward for tournament failure is apparently the UCLA job.

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:22 AM