Basketball what?

Instead of saying something witty about the big St. Paddy's Day, I regress to talking about the next hottest topic today...the start of the NCAA! Now I will tell you upfront that I know NOTHING about professional basketball (or any sport for that matter), so any attempts at sounding "athletically intelligent" in this entry are entirely coincidental.

Several of the folks in my office staff of 45 are die-hard basketball fans. The topic of conversation that constantly floated around the office yesterday was something about brackets and teams. For all I knew, brackets were something that you had when you wore braces...not something you filled out in an attempt to strategize over who will win the basketball championship. I quickly learned to keep my mouth shut and just listen to everyone else chatter, so as not to show off my intelligence...or lack thereof.

An email was sent around yesterday to everyone that those that wanted to participate in a tournament, contributing 5 bucks a person to the ongoing pot, had to submit their brackets online by 11:00 today. I had no idea what it meant to "fill out a bracket" and I don't normally gamble, but I thought it would be fun and how enjoyable would it be if I actually won--me, who knows NOTHING about the sport. :)

Since I know nothing about the teams, I thought it would be fun to rank them based on my favorite colors...or even how much I liked their mascots. When I realized the amount of time it would take for me to research the colors and mascots of every team was more than I had, I used my next best resource...my brother in law! :) I filled out one by myself, and surprisingly, I had the same order that he did!

So, I filled it out online this morning. Now we wait. And watch. My boss has scheduled an important "Research and Development Committee" meeting at the nearest sports grill. After "researching" the entire building, it was decided that there was no TV with adequate reception. Hence the reason for moving the committee meeting to the nearest sports grill.

Maybe after its all over, I will at least know the different colors of some of the teams, and possibly a few mascots. Hey, that's more than I know now. :)