Baby's first basketball bracket

Baby blogworthy's first tournament is in full swing and his Daddy couldn't be more psyched. In fact, yesterday during the games, Hub set the baby  in the bumbo (which we call the bimbo because its infinitely funny to say "baby blogworthy, wanna go sit on the bimbo?") (Oh, there's CPS right now!) in front of the three tvs and let him "watch" until the baby sort of tipped over a little like somebody's drunk uncle.

I can only imagine the shenanigans that will happen when they are home together all summer.

Anydrunkbaby, the genius and epic octopi bracket pickem was just as successful as I had imagined, except we came woefully close to a pre bedtime meltdown. Hub took it very seriously. He kept saying "that hit didn't count. His arms were already up. Pull his arms down and do it again." And I'm all, dude, he doesn't even know his own name yet. I hardly think he realizes he's choosing the winner of basketball games. He just wants to hear Squidbert make those bubbly sounds.

I know in my last post about this I said he likes them both, but I sort of lied. I mean, he likes both, but definitely likes Squidbert a little more, probably because of all the sounds and jaunty seafaring medleys he plays.

Here's how it went down:

Squidbert was the higher seed always because we wanted to give Luke a little handicap. We figured he would usually go for his favorite and choose the high seed. It worked until the last region, when he decided Captain Calamari was more fun.

Then when it was all said and done, Baby Blogworthy picked Memphis to win the national championship.

We posed him with his bracket and took some pictures as I prayed that the sleep window wouldn't slam shut in the middle of our photo shoot.

At first he excited to see what his bracket looked like:

He's so advanced. Not only can he read, he can read upside down.

When Daddy told him that there was no way a 12 seed would win the NCAA National Championship, he got a little bit pissed. Then Daddy explained to him that it's OK, we all make bad NCAA choices, but at the end we just wad up our brackets and throw them angrily in the trashcan. Baby Blogworthy was one step ahead:

Nomming is more fun than wadding & throwing.

But as time went on, he became at peace with his choices.

After all, there's always next year.

By the way, did you catch that we only have three TVs this year? Downgrade.

How are your brackets looking? How many TVs did your significant others decide to put up?

It's that time again

Once again, we've reached the only time of the year I give a damn about sports -- March Madness! Really, if you want me to care about something, make me arbitrarily choose between two things that are exactly the same and watch the magic happen.

Oh, those two teams were both 12-8 in the regular season? Can you give me some information that I can use, such as what are their team colors and who do they have for a mascot? (And for those of you who have asked, namely Ally, that link will take you to a mascot bracket and team color bracket. You're welcome.) Last year my sister wrote about her own mascot brackets and I wrote about how to fake knowing about basketball enough to beat your friends, coworkers or spouse in tournament picks. I've been doing it for 6 years now, so I'm sort of an expert.

The other way to make me care about sports is to add a little drama to it, like a coaching scandal, someone getting arrested or dating a Kardashian. When hub watches NBA games, I refer to players not by their names but as "the guy who cheated on his wife", "gun guy" or "Klohe's husband". But that's another blog for another day.


Anyway. BASKETBALL. Remember what I showed you guys last year?

This is my husband's idea of a good time -- every TV in our home hooked up in one room so he can watch every first and second round game concurrently. It's like a sports bar, plus a couch, minus the booze (that's math). I'm not sure it'll happen this year because our living room now includes 100% more baby products than last season, but he's surprised me before.

And OH YEAH, this year we have a baby! One who can reach out and swat at things and you know what that means? He's getting his own bracket! I'm planning a highly scientific method for him in which I'll assign a team to each of two plush octopi (which I believe is the plural form of octopus and if it's not -- my blog, my rules so suck it, word  nerds) and the one he sticks into his mouth first wins that match up.

It's Captain' Calimari:

 

versus First Mate Squidbert

in epic battle of tentacles, sounds and plastic rings. Calamari has a mirror on his underside, but Squidbert plays sounds when his middle ring is pulled, so....it should be interesting in a way that has nothing whatsoever to do with basketball.  He loves them both. I hope to include some video of this and the results tomorrow.

If you want to get in on a bloggy bracket, Cathy is hooking you up this year (again) so visit her or tweet with her @cathyantsypants. It's for cool people with blogs only WHICH INCLUDES ALL OF YOU.

Oh, lookie here! My girl Natalie is bonding with the men (and little lady) in her life over basketball!

Are you guys watching basketball, or are you more of a football fan? Or does something like American Idol fulfill your need for competition?

It's a par-tay at my house, y'all, a basketball par-tay

I'm still recovering from this really wild party. And by wild, I mean a booze-free party with lots of teenage boys. Wait. That sounds bad. The teenage boys were here for my husband. Wait. I mean, they are his students and members of his basketball team.

I'll back up just a tad. Remember how I told you guys that my husband Loves with a capital L basketball season. And if there was an emotion stronger than love, that's how he'd feel about the three weeks of March Madness. In fact, once we had a conversation in which I asked him, "if I were preg and in labor and there was a UK tournament game on, would you be with me or at the game?" and he said the game. That's his commitment to UK basketball.

For the past four years, this has been my view during the tournament:

I didn't think that you get the full breadth of this so I took a video of it for you guys:







I took that half day from work yesterday. When I got home, Hubby said to me, "Honey, some people might be coming over." And me being a complete and total control freak, I wanted to know exactly how many people and exactly what the plans were. Would there be eating during or before? Are people going to be bringing food, or are we providing it? What time would they be there? How long would they stay? I mean, a girl needs to have her plans in place, people.

I LOVE to entertain and stuff people to the brim with good food and don't get to do it often enough, so I came up with a big plan to cook bad-for-you-bar-food-without-the-bar for all the peeps coming over (the headcount was 10). We just checked out the book Cook This Not That from our local public library. This book is fab and I recommend it for anyone who loves to eat out and wants to watch their girly figure.

Aside: I hope someone realizes one of these days how much I love shilling stuff that I like and gives me gobs of money for it, but for now I'll just write about it for free.

The menu was:

• Chicken tenders with spicy honey mustard sauce
• potato skins
• sliders, half were bacon and cheddar and half were swiss, onions and mushrooms
• cheesy spinich dip
• cheese fries
• Taquitos
• brownies

Of course, of all that stuff I cooked from scratch -- the Gorgonzola cheese I melted into the spinach, the burgers I cut out myself, the chicken tenders I lovingly breaded -- the biggest hit of the whole party was -- you guessed it -- TAQUITOS. Mystery meat central. And also? The brownies.

"Mrs. Austin," a couple guys said, "these brownies are amazing! thank you!"

You're welcome, but they are from a box. SADS.

I got to participate in some fun girly chat at the dining room table with a friend who stopped by with her hubby while 10 teenagers and three adults screamed and carried on using words like "that's sick!" "Nasty!"and "Body up!" and "he ooped it!" As the clock moved toward 10:30, the screaming grew louder. I popped my head in to see what was going on and I discover they are playing NCAA 2010 on PS3. Lovely.

As I mentioned before, it was peticoat rule at my house so male culture really fascinates me. It's like watching a pack of gorillas. My home was a zoo yesterday.

So, question is, who wants to come over to my house for a party?

Get your mascot head on, it's time to play ball!

Is your bracket ready? Did you decide based on team color? Or the the fact that you want to go to California on vacation? Or you saw the player on that one team on TV and his hair looks nicer than yours will ever look, so you choose the other team to win?

Now that you've made those decisions, time to make some more...get ready people, it's the mascot bracket!

College sports have the most amazing mascots ever. I get so excited when I go to games and get to take pictures with or close to mascots. Sort of like Salt on her honeymoon.

I do my mascot bracket as if one mascot was  fighting the other. And I'm very literal about it, too. Like the Richmond Spiders? Will totally get smashed by the St. Mary's Gaels (and I don't even know what a Gael is). Birds that "look tough" will beat birds who do not and insects. Small cats will beat birds, insects and some people. Big cats will beat small cats, all people and bears, but not grizzlies (because in my mind, grizzlies are much bigger and scarier than regular everyday bears). People will beat small animals like dogs, all birds and insects.

I presume people are unarmed, that's because I want all cats (small and large) to advance. People mascots are lame. But I also presume that some people mascots are stronger than others. An unarmed UTEP Miner is going to be stronger than an unarmed Vanderbilt Commodore because I think of commodores as sort of uppity and they totally hide behind their big canons, so unarmed a miner who works all day in a dark, dingy mine swinging a pickax or whatever miners use, has big muscles and therefore could beat a commodore. Feel me? This is why, if you're a mascot, you should pick an occupation that will give you big muscles.

This is the fuzzy logic I use to construct my mascot picks.

My final four are the Houston Cougars, Oakland Golden Grizzlies, Montana Grizzlies and Old Dominion Sassy Pawed Lions (it's something else but that's my name for it because he has an awesome sassy paw and crown).

The Final Four matchups were a toughy for me because I really didn't want to decide between two grizzlies.

I wrote it in and Hubby said, "Do you want it because you want it to win, or because you think it would really win?"  And I was all, "In my heart I know the grizzly would win." So he said, "What if the bear was walking backward and the lion jumped on his back?" And I said, "If I made that happen this round, I'm just going to have the same decision to make when the Sassy Pawed Lion plays a grizz in the next round. I'm just going to go with the grizz."

Golden Grizz wins because it's golden.

My sister, the wonderful Sarah from Princess and the Blog, has a different way of doing things. Here she is in her own words!

My bracket is based on a structured hierarchy:

• Birds beat humans
• All other animals beat birds
• Cats beat all other animals

If two teams play each other and have the same mascot, I will go by what the actual mascot looks like, the school color or school name.  Anything that is not a human, bird, or animal gets placed depending on my mood. A bad mood will result in “A tree? That is a terrible mascot. It loses.” A good mood will result in “Look at that tree’s googly eyes! How cute! Win!” Typically these type of mascots only beat humans and birds.  I always will place rare mascots (turtles, beavers, ducks) above run-of-the-mill mascots (bulldogs, wolves, bears).

I thought the MidWest division was the most difficult this year. There was a whole section of non-animals, so I ended up picking a "worthless nut" that is a cute mascot compared to the other 3 mascots it was playing against; I had to choose between two different hawks; and there was a major upset where the extremely cute Testudo, the diamondback terrapin from Maryland beat Shasta the cougar from Houston.

Actual bracket. See how upset I was about some of these match-ups? A Spartan vs. a guy with a mustache.  Bird vs. bird. Cowboys vs. Yellowjackets vs. Gauchos vs. Buckeyes.

I can pretty much copy over my bracket year-to-year because I use the same hierarchy every year.  Apparently it was quite humorous to certain people that actual know a thing about basketball (like my husband) thought it was funny that I had 3 of the 4 #1 teams being beat by #16 teams. IT TOTALLY COULD HAPPEN…At least in Sarahland. This year, like any good year, I end up with all cat-related mascots in the final four. What can I say? I’m a crazy cat lady.  

My three runners up this year are:

• The Clemson Tigers.  Clemson almost didn't make it out of the first round because they faced the Missouri tigers...that is, until I saw they have a tiger AND tiger cub mascot. It is like 2 cats for the price of one! Win and Win.
• Rufus the Ohio University Bobcat. I like him because his name is Rufus, he is from Ohio (which is where I work!) and I think bobcats are really cute in real life.

• Cosmo the Cougar from BYU. This division had some really tough cat-competition (the Pitt Panthers and the Vermont Catamounts were runners up).  Cosmo gets the edge because I really like his name. Plus the Pitt Panther is kind of creepy looking and I couldn’t find any good pictures or information on the Vermont Catamounts.

My pick for winning it all? 2 words:

OLD DOMINION

Now, I have no affiliation with Old Dominion. I didn’t go there, my family didn’t go there. Yet every year that they are in the tournament, I choose them to win. I just know that one of these days, they will be the Cinderella story and I will win me some big bucks!! It is totally plausible that an 11 seed could win it all, right?? However, the real reason I like them is this:

LOOK AT HIM! HE is a CAT, with a CROWN and a SASSY PAW. He is the king of all cat-related mascots and in my book, that wins, hands down.

Who won your mascot bracket?

How to make March Madness predictions without knowing a thing about basketball: A primer

Yesterday marked the first day of my (one and only) most favoritist sports season of the year: Selection Sunday for the NCAA Tournament.

I didn't have any brothers or male cousins my age. Dad just sat around watching football by himself while Mom, Sarah and I would make up ridiculously complex family stories with our Barbies or set up a My Little Pony castle or sometimes let the sun touch our precious skin whilst drawing stuff on the sidewalk with chalk (we didn't get out much). Sports weren't in our vocabulary.

Fast forward 13 or so years when I was dating my college ex who was obsessed -- LITERALLY OBSESSED -- with bowling. Guys, he had, like, 11 balls. I'm not even exaggerating about that. And he had a robo-brace to keep his arm in place when he bowled, a little powder bean bag to keep his hands dry and a bag for all those balls (I said balls twice!!!!) Also? On the college bowling team. And we dated for three years, by the way. (Fail.)

Anyway, as nobody really considers that a real sport and I didn't learn much about sports from him, let's fast forward another five years to my third month dating my husband. We were in the thick of March Madness and I'd seen some extra-excitable  behavior, but nothing compared to when Kentucky lost to Michigan State in the Final Four and he sulked into another room and came out in Cincinnati Reds gear. Basketball season, he said, was OVER.

I've got a bunch of dooseys from our game watching together (how about the time he accidentally busted a bag of tortilla chips while stomping around during a game? That was awesome.) I love him and like to support him and it's only fair considering how many hours he spends watching trash like the Bachelor and American Idol with me.

In the past 6 years, I've realized I am much more invested in sports if there is:

1. a good story associated with it (a player who donated a kidney to a sick kid, for instance)
2. drama involved (coaching or recruitment scandals) or 
3. a super-hyped match-up.

The above reasons are why I love the NCAA Tournament. AND I love making my predictions, which has been a tradition with Hubby and I. I usually beat him because the less you know, amazingly, the better you fare. Actually the only time I didn't beat him was the year I decided to get all fancy and do a little "research". He's shared a few little tips that have helped me tremendously with my predictions, and bloggy friends, I'm passing them on to you (and a few of these are my own recipes for success):

• At least one 13 will beat a 4.
• At least one 12 will beat a 5.
• At least one 10 will beat a 7.
• At least one 11 will beat a 6.
• For closer match-ups, look at the overall regular season record.
• Also, consider how close they are playing to their home court.
• If neither of these make it any clearer, choose based on some arbitrary thing: Which of the two teams is wearing your preferred color? Are they from a location you've visited before? Or want to visit? Do you remember one of their players from a news story you read? Do you like the way their name sounds (I will always choose Gonzaga)?
• If you are playing with a significant other or male friend, make sure you make their team lose the second round unless they are really good. It won't help you win but it's super fun to watch the color drain out of their face when you announce your prediction.
• Don't make really dramatic upset predictions because usually it's a crap shoot and then it will screw up your whole bracket.

There you have it; an almost fool-proof way to probably beat everybody else in their bracket. If I missed anything or you want to share your secrets (it's just between us and also the entire internet!), leave 'em in the comments! Go print off your own bracket and pretend like you care about basketball for a couple of weeks.

Tune in tomorrow when I'll explain how I make prediction based on mascots, with my first guest blogger!


*Image via