BRACKET LADY REVISITED--MOVED UP FOR RELEVANCE

SUNDAY SPECIAL: MARCH MAYHEM AND THE BRACKET LADY

There is a not very small, not very select and not very elite group of folks who take part in a little invitational bracket handicapping for the NCAA basketball tournament. The scoring system was invented in the Black Forest by elves. The system rewards picking upsets or, in some cases, not knowing you are picking upsets. I enter every year with one goal: Beat Mary Ann!

Mary Ann is very nice lady who acts like she doesn't know stickum about basketball but, under all that Gen X sweetness, she's a stone cold basketball killer. She knows "breaking the press" does not mean the GE Iron is out of warranty. She takes about a month off to study the conference tournaments before the big dance. Her children are instructed "Don't bother Mommy or she'll tech you up!" She's very computer literate and I just know she's dialed into all the mid-major web pages. I'm pretty sure she's on a first name basis with the George Mason coach. She has Jeff Sagarin on speed dial to tell him he's calculating his ratings wrong. She rents time on a mainframe to update RPI's on a daily basis. She even knows there's not ten teams in the Big Ten. The Missouri Board of curators called her to consult on whom to hire. She told them "Start with canning the A.D.".

She fills out about 107 sets of brackets to eliminate all chance of an error. She's dangerous, I tell ya.

So I take out one set, fill them in and watch with interest as she gets almost the entire first round correct. Then I just hold on by my fingernails and hope some of her mysterious upset picks fall off and some team of mine stumbles into the final four so that, maybe, just maybe, my one sheet beats all of Mary Ann's 107. Not much chance of that this year, but I can dream. Maybe next year.