D-Man Madness

I really enjoy watching the NCAA basketball tournament known as March Madness.  I must admit that I really don't follow the college basketball season until March rolls around and the tournament begins. My brother Eric or Brian will usually setup a group online where all the extended family is invited to create a "bracket" with their choice of winners and losers.  The winner gets lunch brought to them on the beach during our annual reunion in San Diego.  However, the bigger prize is to have bragging rights for the rest of the year.  This is especially sweet when one of the kids or wives humbles their proud, sports-following husbands.

This year I made sure that Laura and all our kids created a bracket.  Since they don't know the schools I explained to them how the seeding works (lower numbers usually mean better teams) but also explained that the tournament is famous for upsets.  When Daniel (10) created his bracket he later told me that he got confused for a few minutes part way through and thought that the bigger number seed were the better teams.  This created a very interesting bracket to say the least.  In just one of the four regions he had unknowingly chosen some very low seeded teams (12, 13, 14, 15) to win a few games.  Since he got back on track and picked the better teams to prevail in the end I didn't even notice his hiccup until after the tournament started.  In fact, it was his uncle Eric and cousins who noticed after the first day when Daniel had correctly picked some incredible upsets.  Not only was he leading our family group, he was one of the top people in the millions of brackets on ESPN.  We had a good laugh that first day and figured that it would be all downhill from there.

Well, the upsets continued over the weekend and Daniel is now up to 25th place in the entire ESPN tournament challenge.  Somehow one of the teachers at school found out and had paraded Daniel around from class to class explaining what an amazing feat he had accomplished.  Daniel is obviously very excited but is also handling it very well.  I have now given up on my bracket (2nd to last in the family pool) and am pulling for Daniel the rest of the way.  He is going to need a miracle from BYU this week to win just one more game.  He has become very interested on the details of the winning prize.  I think he is envisioning the entire San Diego family reunion (50+ people) to all go buy him lunch and bring it back to him as he lounges alone on the beach.  He'll enjoy his breakfast burrito and rolled tacos while his Dad and uncles eat a healthy portion of humble pie.

Giddy Up, DMan!