It's time for the NCAA tournament: the one week out of the year that your office turns into a Vegas sports book. Unless, of course, you work at a Vegas sports book in which case it's sort of like this all year long you lucky bastard. But if you're part of the less fortunate 99.9% of the population, you probably have a bracket to fill out and need some advice. Luckily, we have years of experience coming in dead last in office pools and we've broken down the types of people you'll be encountering, character by character, so you know whose bracket to copy off of and who you're going to want to choke out, prison style, in the men's bathroom.
YOU
The control in this little experiment in failure, you're going to pick whatever teams you've actually seen play on TV. This way when somebody asks you why the hell you have Gonzaga in the Final Four, you can tell them that you like the little funny looking white guy they've got running the point because you happened to be hung over enough one Sunday to sit through an entire Gonzaga game. This completely illogical strategy-- assuming someone is the correct choice because you've seen them before-- is actually not as rare as you think, and is in fact the strategy President Bush used to fill his cabinet.
Odds of Winning: 100-1
We all know how well it worked for Dubya.
THE BRACKET PRO
This guy has done his research. Also of note, this guy is an enormous douche. When you tell him you like UConn, he'll go on a
Good Will Hunting-style rant: "Sure you think UConn' gonna win. You read Dick Vitale and Bill Simmons. You'll think that 'till you read Bilas' article on UConn' susceptibility in transition. The sad thing about you is at the end of this tournament, you're going to realize that you spent $15 on an education from ESPN Insider that you could have gotten from swallowing a handful of Ritalin and watching your Xbox simulate all 65 games of the NCAA tournament." He'll be dying to explain every single one of his picks in great detail, both before the tournament starts and after all of his upsets don't happen and he's in last place by the Sweet 16.
Odds of Winning: 101-1
The Bracket Pro is the only person in your office who will do worse than you. Good. But, he's also the only person in your office pool who you should take seriously when he says he' thinking about "doing something crazy if Marquette doesn't pull this one out."
YOUR BOSS'S DAUGHTER
Last year, she picked UNC, Michigan State and Illinois to go to the Final Four because she thought they had pretty colors. Infuriatingly, she won enough money to pay for two-maybe three-of your weekly trips to the massage parlor. Before the second round is underway, you'll be cursing her under your breath while the office makes a big fuss about her latest slobber-faced cameo on your boss's knee.
Odds of Winning: 70-1
Depending on how the "pretty light blue" team does, she'll most likely make some noise in the later rounds while you wish leukemia upon her. Okay, not leukemia, but like a really, really bad cold. And teenage obesity.
THE GUY WHO WENT TO DUKE
This asshole picks his alma mater to win the championship every year and, even though Duke is a perennial favorite, acts like he' going out on a limb by doing so. He'll also make a point to talk about the team in the first-person plural, as in "we barely eked that one out last night," "our freshman are tremendously resilient," or "we had the hottest all-dude orgy last night while watching old Shane Battier tapes." No matter how much you non-Dukers admire JJ Redick and Coach K, after the first round you'll be praying for the entire team to perish in a fiery