I sat down Tuesday night to watch the Horizon League final because that’s the kind of life I lead now, and the network spent the first commercial break interviewing a man whose entire job is guessing what other men will do on Sunday.
His name was something like Brad. He has been on television since November. He has a chart. The chart has been updated. Brad has thoughts about Wofford.
Coach DiMaggio used to say a guy who calls himself an expert at guessing is called a gambler, and a guy who’s good at guessing is called a winning gambler, and a guy who has his own segment on ESPN about it is called Brad. I’m paraphrasing. Coach DiMaggio didn’t know what ESPN was. He thought cable was a kind of fence.
The Horizon League final, in case you were wondering, was a hell of a basketball game. A six-foot-six kid from Cleveland State hit a step-back with eight-tenths of a second left and the building came apart in the way old buildings come apart, where you can hear individual fathers losing their minds. They cut to Brad. Brad updated the bracket. Brad said the kid’s team was now a twelve seed instead of a thirteen seed. Then they went to commercial for an app that lets you bet on whether the next free throw will be a make or a miss.
My buddy Ray Kowalczyk called me at the half. Ray watched two minutes of bracketology and turned the game off. Said it felt like watching a wedding where they spend the whole reception explaining the seating arrangements for next year’s wedding.
I want to be clear about something. I have nothing against the kid with the chart. He’s smart. He’s been drawing brackets since he could hold a pencil, I’m sure, and now somebody pays him to draw them on a wall-sized monitor. Good for him. I just don’t understand when