Optimism vs. Past Experience
In what promises to be the first of its many wins in this tournament, top-ranked Unjustified Optimism tips off against Everything You’ve Learned Over the Years when that guy Jonathan stops by your cubicle to see if you want to chip in a hundred dollars for this year’s March Madness pool. Note that neither of Optimism’s traditional first-round rivals—Self-Control and Awareness of Your Own Limitations—even qualified for the postseason this year.
The Desire to Appear Insightful and Creative vs. Logic
Basic Reason’s bid for the title is likely to come to an abrupt end when it goes head-to-head with the perennial favorite, Your Irrational Need to Be Different, which comes fresh off a First Four victory against Not Really Understanding How March Madness Even Works. Note that The Desire has had some truly impressive runs in the past, including that time you designed your bracket around the schools that had the highest S.A.T. scores and you finished last in the pool, or the following year, when you designed your bracket around the schools that had the lowest S.A.T. scores and you finished last in the pool. Frankly, this year’s strategy—steering clear of those seed-number things everyone’s obsessed with and instead arranging teams based on their average shoe size—has success written all over it.
All Those Weird Looks You’re Getting Now vs. How Totally Awesome It’ll Be When You Win
Although The Sideways Glances and Barely Concealed Scorn of Your Coworkers has proven itself as something of a force in recent matchups—for example, against Your Really Clever Star Wars Novelty Tie a few weeks ago—the smart bets will be on Fantasizing About Rubbing It in Their Faces When You Win That Twenty-five-Hundred-Dollar Jackpot, Especially Jonathan’s, Since He Always Wins These Things Somehow. Seriously, nothing would beat that.
Optimism vs. Those First Few Games
Here’s a competitor that should give Your Somehow Unflagging Sense of Hope a run for its money, but ultimately it’ll take more than Seeing All But Two of Your Teams Summarily Knocked Out to send All Those Pathetic, Heartbreaking Delusions home.
Eating Lunch in the Bathroom vs. The Laughter
Most commentators agree that Furtively Downing a Panera Flatbread in a Fourth-Floor Men’s-Room Stall ought to come out on top by a decent point differential.
You vs. Wife
A classic matchup that seems poised to finally answer timeless postseason questions like “Honey, why did you take out a hundred dollars from the A.T.M. the other day?” and “Are you kidding me? After what happened last year?” and “What was the point of you going to all that counselling?” Look for Wife to continue the undefeated streak that began last summer with her decisive win against The Idea of You Taking a Year or Two Off from Work So You Can Get a Master’s in Typeface Design.
All Sports Outcomes Are Essentially Random vs. Wow, Kansas Is Really Good
Dark-horse contender Oh, That’s What People Mean By “Seed Ranking” will achieve a surprising, years-in-the-making win when one of the two teams you’ve still got left is down by so many points at halftime that its players don’t even bother to show up for the rest of the game.
Western Aleutian Technical College of Whale Husbandry vs. 2,130,293-to-1 Odds
Your Last Remaining Eccentric Pick takes its best shot at breaking into the Sweet Sixteen in what is destined to be this tournament’s Cinderella story. Unfortunately, it’s a Cinderella story written by Nate Silver, where Prince Charming opts for a higher-seeded, statistically more probable princess and Cinderella isn’t invited to the ball for another two decades.
Optimism vs. Inevitable Failure
It may come down to the buzzer, but in the end it’ll be The White-Hot Sting of Total, Humiliating Defeat that finally cuts down the net. Which is weird because there’s still, like, two weeks until the actual end of March Madness, when Jonathan will graciously win the pool and offer to take everyone out to lunch at Outback like a complete dick. Still, you learned some important lessons from this whole process, like how sports prognostication is best left to people who really know what they’re doing, and how you forgot to somehow incorporate the standard deviations for all those shoe sizes into your bracket. But hey, that’s what next year is for, right?
Illustration by Richard McGuire.
