The moment you all wait for every year. The beginning of Morgan’s Annual NCAA Tournament Challenge. In that this is the second year I’ve done it.

Regardless (or irregardless), here we go! We got 10 entries this year (including me), and loads of irrational picks all over the place (including Illinois in the final four, Vanderbilt in the final four, Pittsburgh in the final four, and everything in between). But as we all know, rationality has nothing to do with March Madness, or else it would be called March Perfect Equilibrium. And what would be the fun in that. I purposely when picking this year thought “just go with your gut, and don’t even question it.” It was that gut that had me ranked 1600 out of 5 million on ESPN two years ago (for those of you sick of hearing about that, shut it, it’s my only shining sports predicting moment).

I’ll update the score as we go (I just give one point for each correct guess). As my friend Tim just said, these next two days have to be the two best days on the whole Sports calendar. Pretty sure I agree with him.

Updates:

3/25 – Andrew – 57

Steve, bdf – 56

Jonathan – 55

Ryan R, Ryan H, jdub – 52

Tim – 49

Bethany – 48

Morgan – 43

Jacqui – 35

3/24 – Steve – 54

Andrew – 53

bdf – 52

Jonathan – 51

Ryan R, Ryan H, jdub – 50

Bethany, Tim – 47

Morgan – 41

Jacqui – 33

New Entry – So Jacqui had wanted to enter the challenge, and I did receive her bracket before the games started, but I just didn’t have a chance to add her yet. So I’ve added her to the Day 4 update (to be honest, I’m glad to have her on so she can join me in pathetic-ness. I was getting lonely).

Day 4 – Bethany, bdf, jdub, Ryan H – 38

Andrew – 37

Ryan R, Steve – 36

Tim, Jonathan – 35

Morgan – 27 (sheesh, why did I do this bracket challenge again?)

Jacqui – 24

Day 3 – Bethany – 35

bdf – 34

Steve, Ryan H, jdub – 33

Andrew – 32

Jonathan, Tim, Ryan R – 30

Morgan – 25

– wow, this is embarrassing. Also, I’ve decided to change the rules a little bit, to be more in correspondence with the way I see other brackets go. 1 point per correct game in the first two rounds. 2 points per correct in the next two. 3 points for correct final four predictions, and 4 points for picking the national champ correct. I did not make this slight rule change to benefit myself in any way, just for the record, as I’m going to be lucky to get out of last place at all.
Day 2 – Ryan H – 27

jdub, Bethany, bdf – 26

Ryan R, Steve – 25

Andrew – 24

Jonathan, Tim – 23

Morgan – 21 (ouch)

Day 1 – Ryan R and Ryan H – 13

Bethany, jdub, bdf, Jonathan – 12

Morgan, Tim, Steve – 11

Andrew – 10

Teams:

Morgan – bracket

Ryan R – bracket

Ryan H – bracket

Tim – bracket

Bethany – bracket

Jdub – bracket

Andrew – bracket

bdf – bracket

Jonathan – bracket

Steve – bracket

Jacqui