Nobody Cares About Your Bracket
BOSTON (CBS) -- For some people, today marks the beginning of the most glorious time of year: March Madness. For those of us who are sane human beings, today marks the start of the most insufferable three-week stretch of the sports calendar.
It's not that the games are bad -- the games are actually pretty good! -- and it's not that those bracket pools in the office can't be fun -- gambling is exciting! It's just that, well, OK, there's no easy way say this, but here goes.
Nobody cares about your stupid bracket.
Nobody.
Not one body.
Not me. Not him. Not her. Nobody.
You could call your darling mother right now and start talking about your bracket, and she'd most likely abruptly end the phone call. You could pull somebody who's been isolated in solitary confinement for a week -- a person who's been completely devoid of human contact, someone who is desperate to have a conversation -- and as soon as you uttered the words, "Yeah, I think Shaka Smart is going to get VCU into the Sweet 16," that person will be begging to go back to the hole.
Nobody cares about your bracket.
I say this not out of anger. I say this because I care about you and I don't want anybody to hate your guts (Aside from the people who already do hate your guts. I can try to help you with that, but it's going to cost you $200/hour.)
You might be saying, "Hey, party pooper, it's March Madness. We all want to talk about our brackets. Chill out. Jeez, you must be really fun at parties."
To that, I say, first, no, I'm not much fun at parties. But that's besides the point.
Here's the real twist to this situation: Even if you think someone wants to hear about your bracket, even if someone asks you about your bracket, that person still does not care about your bracket. That person is only initiating the conversation so that, once you are done explaining that you believe Stephen F. Austin "really has a chance to go on a Cinderella run the way that George Mason did," he can then talk about his bracket. And when he is talking about his bracket, you will wait for keywords -- "Utah," "Izzo," "Jerian Grant," whatever -- and then you will respond about where you have those teams going.
This is not a conversation. This is torture.
If you don't want to stop this behavior for me, that's fine, but won't you think of the children?
Kids these days are sweet and impressionable, and if they hear you talking about your bracket in public, they're going to grow up thinking that it's OK to talk about something so stupid when other people are around. Think about the impact that will have on the degradation of society.
Oh, and there's one more very important topic to cover here: If you're one of those psychopaths who fills out multiple brackets, then you can divide the level of interest others have in your bracket by the number of however many brackets you sat there filling out on your laptop. If you filled out four brackets -- first of all, you're the pits -- and you start saying "Yeah, I got Wisconsin in the Final Four in one of my brackets but I got them losing in the round of 32 in another, and then in another one I have them winning it all," then the people who already did not care one iota about your bracket have now decreased their interest fourfold.
(I know that when you divide zero by four, you still get zero. But think of it more in a Voldemort/Horcrux sense, where the overall power of something gets shattered whenever it is divided, to the point where it has almost no strength whatsoever. That makes sense, right? No? You haven't read all of the Harry Potter books? OK, nerds. Maybe that's your problem.)
The inevitable comparison for the Bracket Oversharer is one made to Mr. Fantasy Football Chatterbox. But as annoying as the-guy-who-won't-shut-up-about-how-he-drafted-Zach-Ertz-in-the-sixth-round-and-it-could-turn-out-to-be-the-steal-of-the-year may be, at least he actually (kind of) did something. He made a draft board, endured a multiple-hour-long draft, and set his lineup every week while watching RedZone for seven hours on Sunday. Meanwhile you just clicked a bunch of basketball matchups to pick winners. A trained monkey can do that. The coin flip program I had on my calculator in high school (miss you, TI-83) can do that.
You're not special, bracket-filler-outer, so stop screaming "Yes! I had Iowa State in the Final Four!" after the Cyclones miraculously pull off a buzzer beater to fend off a pesky UAB team in the round of 64. You don't matter in this equation. Can't you just enjoy sport for sport?
(If you gambled real money, you're obviously exempt from this request. If you want to pin your financial life on the shoulders of 19-year-old kids who can't even grow facial hair, that's your own business, and if they pull off a win for you, you've earned the right to scream.)
I understand that this got a little bit lengthy, so if reading isn't your thing, I've got you covered with this nifty flow chart:
I hope that helps.
Enjoy March Madness. Just don't talk about it.
Society thanks you in advance.
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here. You can email him or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
