The 10 archetypes in every office bracket pool
Everybody has one of these type of people in your office.
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It’s the absolute best time of year to be a die-hard college basketball fan.
After four months of a long and particularly grueling season, the NCAA Tournament has arrived. However, it’s not officially March until one thing happens: the staff-wide NCAA Tournament pool blast email.
Office life may have undergone significant changes in the past year, but the office pool is eternal. If you haven’t already received yours, you know that email is coming your way in the coming days (mine hit my inbox last Friday). Nothing builds a sense of community with your colleagues like making small talk about the games as you all pretend like you’re actually working and not sitting in your home office with four games on at once while you move your mouse occasionally to keep your chat status as “active”.
There are a lot of different methods of filling out your bracket. How chalky should you be? Should you take a big swing on an underdog in hopes of being the only one to reap the benefits? Regardless of how you choose to make your picks, you will likely fall into one of these archetypes.
The Traditionalist
You’re a one bracket type of person (which is the correct way, btw). You believe that the best way to enjoy March Madness is by having one bracket that you enter in every pool. It makes it easy to keep track of, and there’s a good chance that it’ll be busted by the first weekend anyways. This is the optimal method for balancing bracket rooting interests and pure enjoyment of the games.
Multiple Entry Guy
Making more than one entry into a pool is, in general, fine. Maybe you’re an alum of a school and wanted to fill out a normal bracket and one with your alma mater going the distance. That’s fun! However, each additional bracket that gets entered into a pool is exponentially more obnoxious. Saying “oh I picked that upset in my other bracket” is going to get you left out of group lunch orders and shit-talked at the water cooler. If you are in this group, just know that you are viewed as a lesser member of society. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is.
The Analytics Simp
You spend $20 a year on your KenPom subscription and dammit you’re gonna put it to good use. In your mind, using a statistical approach to picking each game should maximize your chance at taking home the pool’s pot. In practice, picking every game based on what the numbers say should happen is going to have you in second-to-last place, just ahead of Andrew from the Billing Department who forgot to fill his out.
The Blue Blood Aficionado
The 0.0 WAR of college basketball fans. Without Duke and Kentucky in the field, their college basketball consumption has been limited this year and their bracket will reflect as such. They’ll hitch their wagons to Kansas and North Carolina, and will be sure to tell you how Gonzaga always chokes in the tournament and that there’s no way it wins this season. They won’t watch a single game past the first weekend and will still finish just outside of the money. Avoid them at the water cooler at all costs.
Upset Freak
“Alright, so I’ve got two 13 seeds in the Elite Eight, at least one 15 seed moving on, definitely gonna go with at all of the 11 and 12 seeds to advance, and can’t forget about those classic 5-12 upsets!” Their bracket is going up in flames by the end of the first day and they’re still going to have more fun than you.
Mascot Bracket
Self-explanatory. Hopefully the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos can bring it home for you this year.
Coin Flip Bracket
Lame as hell. How about you create a decision tree algorithm in Python to pick your bracket like a fucking adult instead?
The Part-Time Coach
It’s important to have hobbies to maintain a work-life balance. In your downtime, you coach your daughter’s 3rd-grade basketball team on the weekends. At that point, they’re still learning the fundamentals of the game, but it’s a fun activity to spend some time on. At nights, you’re spending 3-4 hours grinding YouTube tape analyzing the schemes and approaches that various coaches deploy. When the time comes, you will deploy your deep encyclopedic knowledge of every coach’s X’s and O’s philosophies en route to a 27th percentile finish in your pool.
The Non-fan Bracket
It happens in every office. The person that doesn’t particularly follow the sport or sports in general absolutely nails their picks and wins the pool by a wide margin. It can be tough to swallow your pride and keep your ego in check when you aren’t the preeminent Sports Knower in your office.
No Bracket/Anti-Fun
If you talk about how much better it is to just watch the games and not worry about a bracket, everyone in your office has the right to suplex you through your break room table. Go to hell.
See you next Monday. Enjoy the hoops.
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