Imagine you’re sitting in class and learning of a new project your teacher is going to give out. You go through all your standard in-class emotions, confusion, indignance, rage, but then you realize that you’re required to fill out a bracket for a sport you barely knew about, let alone followed in its regular season. Confused and writing down random guesses, you’re only doing this because it might be part of the grade. That was me last year as a Journalism 1 student, but this year, I had an idea for The Lance’s March Madness event. Some people say it’s better to go in with knowledge of college basketball, others say going in blind is the best way to win: So, I did the only thing I could do — filled out two brackets, one for me and one for Adam.
Adam is an online friend of mine, we’ve known each other for give or take a year now. We primarily agree on a lot of things when it comes to hobbies and entertainment, but one thing we disagree on is sports. He loves watching sports, and is very knowledgeable about teams and what’s going on during different sports seasons – I, on the other hand, have no clue about sports, and really don’t engage with them often. I filled out my bracket during the later half of journalism, then immediately went on Discord to get his answer.
“Alright sure. I’m a bit of a sports nerd so maybe I can help. Plus well, I’m your best friend,” he sent when I asked if he wanted to help with this project. As soon as I got home and got on a phone call with him, we immediately got to work filling out his bracket. While my decisions were more rushed and made by simply looking at their rankings in their respective area of the page, his were more calculated and took into consideration things such as the school’s old track record and the last results of March Madness. I submitted both brackets the following day, and anticipated the results.
Every day I’d check the standings, and I was shocked to see the difference in our brackets. While Adam’s score was in the 170-200 place range, my bracket of sheer randomness was in the 1-30 place range. I was confused, Adam had knowledge of a lot of sports, maybe not basketball in specific, but he had lots of knowledge on hockey and football. Meanwhile, I barely knew about any college except UConn, but that’s only because I toured the school and applied there.
“Sports are unpredictable, there’s always gonna be one big upset,” said Adam when asked about whether having sports knowledge ahead of time would help his bracket. He understands that while having knowledge is always helpful to know, anything can happen and we always need to expect the unexpected.
However, when looking at the people in front of or around me in terms of scores, it seems that neither random luck nor sports knowledge is better than the other. As of this publication, I am in second place, behind one person who knows sports and tied with two others, who may have guessed just like I did. Whether it’s me, Adam, or the rest of the school, it’s March Madness after all, and anything and everything can happen.