$360 – That’ll buy a few jars of pickles.
That’s right: Brown Joe is the proud new owner of a Freddy’s franchise in Indianapolis, Indiana. And that’s right: Brown Joe is our champion, winner of $360. And that’s right: the money’s already been spent on pickles.
Indianapolis, by the way, is site of the 2021 Final Four. Which got me to thinking about a family gathering. Whaddaya say? If the Hawks make it that year? Pre-game meal on Brown? Post-game sundaes on Brown? Heinz’ll remain in the hotel room, of course – blowing through the family’s savings. This is shaping up to be something special. Mark your calendars.
What a shot. What a game. The Tourney always delivers. Always. And this year it delivered more than always. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
It’s three years running without any of us picking the champion correctly. Breese came closest. He often does. Ironically, or controversially, had Breese been correct with his pick of North Carolina as champion, he still wouldn’t have won. Brown had this wrapped up after the semis. Our esoteric scoring method divides points among the games a bit more equally than what you’ll find in the big-box-store, crackerjack-style pools. While those jobs skew far too heavily to rewarding a correct pick of a champion, thereby devaluing the earlier rounds, our approach is more socialist. And Brown, being both socialist and capitalist, navigated it perfectly. After a rather pedestrian start (T-8 after Round 1), Brown caught fire. He was T-2 with his Sweet 16 picks and his Elite 8 picks and then T-1 with his Final Four and championship pairings predictions. KC Dubbs finished two points back, losing this one by not getting a squad to the championship game.
You’ll remember, last year Brown finished tied with eventual winner Cullen. The pool was decided on the final game total points tiebreaker, Cullen getting 10 points closer to the number than Brown. If not for that, we’d now have our fourth ever repeat champ (Cullen ’04-’05; Dan-O ’06-’07; KC Dubbs ’12-’13).
Let’s have a look at the final breakdown:
Joe: 71
Kevin: 69
Matt: 66
Ryan: 65
Brad: 63
Brennan: 63
Jon: 59
Dan: 58
Clark: 54
Trevor: 53
Marc: 53
Rusty: 52
And there you have it. The money is Brown’s. The rest of you can suck it.
