Anybody who read my post yesterday already knows that I screwed up copying Chris’s bracket once by accidentally writing down Long Beach State in the 2nd round instead of the Louisville pick that he actually had. It almost cost him since Kentucky won last night, he ended up in a tie for first in our neighborhood pool and he could have lost over 300 bucks if he lost the tiebreaker (he didn’t). What I didn’t say yesterday was that I actually made two mistakes copying Chris’ bracket and while the 2nd mistake was much bigger than the first it actually ended up winning him the pool and the first place prize of $517. Here is the story:

So every year for about the past ten years now our family has participated in the local neighborhood March Madness pool (AKA the Miller pool). The pool has grown every year and is up to about 150 people this year so with 5 dollars a person the first place prize got up to $517 like I said before. Unfortunately for Chris (AKA the bracket guru) he was unable to hand deliver his brackets to the Millers because he is at college now at the University of Maryland and he has no car to speak of. Therefore in order to get his bracket in he had to send his bracket to his older and wiser brother (me) through the computer and I would then get it to the Miller’s with the rest of our family entries. Because Chris is not very smart, he could not find a way to email me his bracket so we were forced it do it through ESPN. Chris and I share an ESPN.com account so he just put his bracket on there and because our printer was broken (typical) I had to copy it by hand. This is where things got interesting.

Chris, being the bracket guru that he is, decided to only fill out one bracket for all of the pools that he entered and different websites that he put his bracket into. His final four read as Marquette, Kentucky, Kansas, and Ohio State with his championship teams being Kentucky and Kansas and of course Kentucky winning it all. Unfortunately for Chris when he entered his bracket into ESPN he accidentally screwed up his championship pick and put Ohio State in the final vs Kentucky when he meant to put Kansas in it like he had in all of his other pools. Chris didn’t notice this of course and I started copying down his picks a couple of hours later (late Wednesday night, about 12 hours before the tourney started) without talking to Chris at all about his picks and with no knowledge of who he had or wanted in the final four or winning it all other than the bracket that I had in front of me on ESPN.com. Like I said since the printer was broken so I had to do it by hand and that is when my screw up happened. I am not sure why I did this but when copying his bracket, for the championship game I accidentally copied down Kansas instead of Ohio State even though it clearly said Ohio State on there (Chris saw it the next day, would have been too late by then). Like I said though, I had no knowledge of who he wanted I just accidentally miswrote Kansas when he actually wrote Ohio State, having no knowledge that Chris screwed up in the first place and wanted Kansas in the final all along.

After all that I ended up sending his bracket in with Kentucky and Kansas in the championship without knowing that I completely screwed up Chris’ bracket (when in reality I actually saved it). The tournament played out so Kansas ended up beating Ohio State narrowly in that final four matchup that Chris predicted and they went on to lose to Kentucky in the final and Chris went on to win the neighborhood pool’s first place prize and collect $517 in the process. If I had not made the mistake of writing down Kansas instead of Ohio State in the championship than he would have finished outside of the top ten and won $0. Only us O’Malleys could screw up a championship pick twice and win over 500 dollars because of it.