apparently I am tied for first in my office bracket...

"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
04/08/2019 at 10:03 • Filed to: None

...despite almost zero effort.

DISCUSSION (14)

punkgoose17 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
04/08/2019 at 10:09

Congrats. That is the best way to do it.

Ash78, voting early and often > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
04/08/2019 at 10:11

One of the things I miss least about working in an office was brackets. There was just so much contentiousness and pressure, and it was especially hilarious when the new 23-year-old secretary who had never watched basketball in her life would win. All the office bros would get so secretly angry.

“I chose mine based their team colors!”

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
04/08/2019 at 10:11

We had brackets in my HS history class. I purely guessed, and got both teams and was within 5 of the actual score. The first and last time I ever did a bracket.

Chuckles > Ash78, voting early and often
04/08/2019 at 10:18

I also hate how sports people at work can’t grasp the concept of “I don’t watch basketball.”

“Want to do a bracket?”

“No thanks, I don’t watch basketball.”

“oh it’s ok if you don’t know anything, it just makes the games more fun to watch.”

“But I don’t watch the games.”

“What do you mean you don’t watch the games?!”

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Ash78, voting early and often
04/08/2019 at 10:18

Oof. I went through selecting all the obscenely heavily favored, guessed some “lucky underdog” picks for the lulz, and here I am.

Ash78, voting early and often > Chuckles
04/08/2019 at 10:22

Every fall I have to fake my way through endless college football conversations. I stopped seriously watching college football about 15 years ago, but I know enough to fake it. Or maybe my friends and coworkers are just nice to me.

Them: “Hey, how about that Georgia-Kentucky game?!”

Me (not knowing what happened or who won) : “I think the secondary was asleep on that pass , ridiculous!”

Them: “I know, Kentucky let the bulldogs run all over them!”

Me (relieved): “Kentucky needs to just stick to basketball, amiright?!”

Ash78, voting early and often > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
04/08/2019 at 10:23

I would have been like “Derp, Kentucky Kansas UNC Duke!”

Whoops.

Chuckles > Ash78, voting early and often
04/08/2019 at 10:29

I come from a family of sports people, so even if they didn’t watch a game, they saw the highlights on espn. The older I get, the less I care about sports. And I have an extremely low tolerance for listening to people on TV argue about sports.

I attribute some of my disinterest to moving away in my 20s. When you aren’t surrounded by people talking about the teams you grew up with, and your teams aren’t on TV in your area, it’s easy to stop caring as much.

Ash78, voting early and often > Chuckles
04/08/2019 at 10:40

In the deep south, if you attend, follow, or live within 200 miles of a large state school, you are fully expected to be a fan of AT LEAST football, if not a couple others. But always football.

“So you’re a Gators fan?”

“Well, I went to UF”

“So you’re a Gators fan.”

“I don’t really watch footb...”

“I knew it! Gators suck. ”

Chuckles > Ash78, voting early and often
04/08/2019 at 10:46

I wasn’t quite in the deep south, but I moved from PA to eastern NC. If there’s one sport those folks care about, it’s college basketball. And everybody is a fan of UNC or Duke even though none of them went there.

But for pro sports, it was a weird place. No local baseball team, and the only NFL and NHL teams in the state are fairly recent additions, so you don't have generations of fandom baked in. Very different than where I lived in PA, about an hour from Philadelphia.

Ash78, voting early and often > Chuckles
04/08/2019 at 10:53

My dad’s whole family (2-3 generations back) are from Philly and everyone was Eagles fans. It was just built in. I’ve never lived anywhere where we had fans of pro sports, so it’s still foreign to me. And also a little odd because I see most pro athletes as opportunistic. They’re just employees and they go wherever they want. Sure, you have the occasional Tom Brady, but if he sucked I guarantee he wouldn’t be in Boston for a decade or more. Conversely, being a college fan means losing half the team almost every year; fully turning over the team roster in 4-5 years. It’s very ephemeral.

Here it’s all college fans, so everyone is gerrymandered together in the same geographical area. You all get along just fine, but it makes for some awkwardness because no series of 5 friends or neighbors are all on the same side of things (unlike with pro sports, generally).

If I even see a pro logo, I have to rack my brain to remember what it is. Odds are it’s not the Titans or Falcons, it’s some high school that borrows the logo.

Chuckles > Ash78, voting early and often
04/08/2019 at 11:04

I grew up heavily indoctrinated in the ways of Philly sports fandom. I skipped a day of college classes to go to the world series parade in 2008, the first pro sports championship in my lifetime. It was a blast. I went to the Eagles parade too but mostly because I wanted to take my mom. It was still fun but it felt very different.

My college sports fandom was much easier to shed. Grew up a Penn State fan, went there for a year before dropping out, and then the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke. I went back to college at a D2 school so I don't have any strong ties to college sports now.

Ash78, voting early and often > Chuckles
04/08/2019 at 11:17

In high school I lived about at hour from Happy Valley (just for 2 years) but was surprised at how few PSU fans were around. In small towns, it was a lot more about the local high school teams than anything else. Well, plus the Eagles (This was back before the Steelers got good again ). I don’t think Sandusky could have tarnished an SEC school much. They would just distance themselves from it and a couple years later everyone would forget.

Chuckles > Ash78, voting early and often
04/08/2019 at 11:26

I have wondered how that scandal might have played out at a school like Alabama with a coach like Saban. It's one thing when a longtime assistant turns out to be a terrible person. That alone is easy enough to distance yourself from. But when you find out that the face of the entire program was aware of it and really didn't do enough to stop it, well that makes it harder to just move on as a program. A lot of people in that town worshipped Paterno and they couldn't let go of the image of that man as a Saint.