Tourney Time

People love college sports. They love it for any number of reasons. The purity of the sport, the passion, athletes giving it everything they have simply for the love of the game. All those great cliches. But what is at the heart of it all? What is the essence of what makes the college game so great? Gambling, that's what.

• Fact: Over 200 billion brackets were filled out last week for the NCAA Tournament.*


• Fact: I love gambling.**

Since I love gambling and this is the single greatest gambling weekend of the year I needed to fully immerse myself. I took Friday off for 32 games and at least 30 hours of college basketball. It was going to awesome. It was a complete disaster. I've never seen anything like it. Just dagger after dagger. It was brutal. Let's start with the brackets, here are the two I have money on:

The are both a mess, but the second one is really horrible. USC. What was I thinking? Who's USC's favorite player? OJ Mayo. What's my least favorite food ever. Mayonaisse. I would I pick a team centered around the worst condiment in the world for the Final Four. No matter how delicious orange juice is it does not counteract the disgustingness of Mayo. I should know better than that. But it got worse when I started betting on individual games. I lost 19 of 25 bets. I wasn't even sure that was mathematically possible. Here are a few examples of a typical bet for me this weekend:

• Butler against Tennessee. I parlayed Butler +4.5 and the over (140). Butler is down by 3, with the ball, with less than 15 seconds left. Pretty much a lock. There are three realistic scenarios normally, Butler makes a two, a three at the buzzer, or miss a shot as time runs out. Either way I win. What happens? Butler misses a shot with less than three seconds, Tennessee rebounds. Game over, I win. Oops, Butler commits a pointless foul when the game is essentially over, Tennessee hits two free throws, wins by 5, I lose. Dammit.
• I have Clemson at -6. They're winning by 19 in the second half and still manage to pull defeat from the jaws of victory.
• Oregon +2.5. Up by 12 late in the second half, they lost by 7. Welcome to my life.

Fortunately I don't technically have a "gambling problem". I only lost $100, but still what a bunch of crap. I hate college basketball.

*Not an actual fact

**Actual fact