The 2022 NCAA men’s basketball tournament is finally upon us.
For even the most casual college basketball fans, it’s a reason to celebrate. Soon, our workdays will be filled with the wondrous distraction of Bill Raftery’s voice and 15 seeds punching above their weight class for 30 minutes before crashing back to earth. There may not be a better four-day stretch of sports than the 48 games the NCAA drops on us to welcome spring back into our lives.
If you aren’t a college basketball fan, this is an encroachment. A welcome one, perhaps — no one’s gonna notice if your productivity wanes Thursday/Friday, even if you’re just sneaking out to get your tires rotated — but still an interloper into your world. Much like the fantasy football defeats of fall, you’ll have to deal with stories of busted brackets that neither interest or involve you.
You’ll be confronted with multiple opportunities to join bracket pools. Your excuse of “thanks, but I haven’t really been paying attention this season” will be wiped away by some apocryphal tale of a friend’s friend winning the whole thing based on their dog’s picks.
So, here’s your chance to join them. You won’t even have to make the decisions yourself. Behold, six different brackets, one of which is based on an actual basketball expert’s picks, the rest mostly reliant on outside circumstances that have nothing to do with the game itself. Peruse, figure out which you like most, and feel free to steal it for your office/high school friends/closely-knit nursing home pool.
