Bracketology

We love the NCAA basketball tournament around here. Basketball is fun to watch and it's fast-moving enough that even the less-sports savvy of our kids (William and Tessa) will watch and enjoy it. This year's tournament should be fun, as the Utes are a #5 seed (sadly playing in Miami). We even cheered for the Utah State Aggies (someone we like to see win unless they are playing the Utes since we live in Aggie-land and have lots of Aggie friends) who are playing in Boise. That might as well be a home game for them.

When Jay and I were first married we filled out our brackets and made a friendly wager on the tournament. Nothing big - just who got to choose the next movie or something like that - but it was fun to add a little competition to the mix. Unfortunately I always lost. Always. No matter how much I trashed talked, I always lost in the Jay/Rhonda Bracket Wars. Eventually I just lost interest and quit filling out a bracket.

This year, though, our whole family is getting in on the action. Henry overhead Jay and I talking about our past competitions and decided he wanted to fill out his own bracket. This led, predictably, to William and Tessa filling out their own brackets as well. Actually, Jay went through every single game with each child and let them make their choices. I admire his patience - it took quite a while. Henry knows more than is probably healthy for a 7 year old about college basketball so his choices weren't completely out there. Tessa basically chose the underdogs, for some reason. I think she just picked the last team that Jay said, which would explain her ultimate prediction that mighty Morgan State will be the NCAA champion this year. William didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to his choices. He seemed partial to Robert Morris and Stephen F. Austin for some reason, as well as Clemson (he likes the color orange). His final four predictions were Utah, Northern Iowa, Clemson and Duke, with Clemson eking out a victory over the Utes in the championship game.

So if you hear strains of "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year..." coming from our house, we're not trying to recapture the Christmas spirit. We're just enjoying March Madness. Go Utes!