Greeson: Longest of shots, coffee talk and a Debbie lookalike

Jay Greeson
Jay Greeson

While Baylor junior Chase Viland had little trouble with the opening round of the NCAA tournament, the odds of hitting all the picks in the NCAA men's basketball tournament remain as remote as finding a specific needle in an ocean of needles.

It's a mathematical sensory overload that is so crazy and unpredictable that billionaire Warren Buffett offered $1 billion last year to anyone who could pick a perfect bracket.

It's as safe a billion-dollar bet as can be.

photo Jay Greeson

If you were able to fill out a bracket in a second, it would take you 292 billion years to fill out one for all the possible combinations.

If every person on the planet filled out a bracket every second, it would take 42 years for the all of the possible combinations.

On normal notebook paper, all the possible brackets go around the globe more than 21 million times.

Buffett's money was safe last year by lunch on Saturday of the first weekend of the three-week-long event.

This year Buffett did not offer the contest -- there is a lawsuit from last year's contest because, well, we're super-eager to sue everyone in this country -- but the craziness continued. And so did the upsets.

Cup of wisdom

It was puzzling at first, a coffee company encouraging its baristas to discuss race relations with their patrons.

Of course, we can only assume that Starbucks was banking on the time-honed expertise of blending coffee and creamer as a meaningful background to discuss societal issues and community harmony.

Perfect.

And once this really bridges the race issues in our fair nation, we can turn to the order takers at Taco Bell to figure out immigration, the staff at Dunkin' Donuts to cure obesity and the good folks at Ace Hardware to end homelessness.

Super.

Lost in translation

When government gets its pen on the most simple of phrases, well, there's no telling what will be rewritten.

Take Todd Gardenhire's "no speed camera" bill. It was presented, pushed and pulled and prodded until the pencil marks were passed off and polished to the point that a "No speed camera" bill actually allows speed cameras. Which seems akin to ordering a chili dog with no chili.

Still, the compromise of cameras only ticketing drivers doing in excess of 15 miles per hour over the speed limit seems fair and reasonable.

Will there's a way

Everyone has seen the picture of Will Ferrell cross-dressing as Little Debbie on "The Tonight Show."

And yes, there's no such thing as bad publicity, so the entire Little Debbie snack cake group certainly is smiling.

Two questions popped to mind: First, apparently Little Debbie's appeal to a certain level of high achievers. Ferrell is arguably the biggest comedy actor in Hollywood right now, and University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban has a weakness for Oatmeal Creme Pies. (Who doesn't, right?)

The other question: who knew that Will Ferrell looked that much like Little Debbie on the packaging? It's borderline surprising that he didn't turn that into a recurring character on "Saturday Night Live."

Jay Greeson's column will appear on Page A2 on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays. His sports columns are scheduled for Tuesdays and Fridays. You can read his online column the "5-at-10" Monday through Friday at timesfreepress.com after 10 a.m.

Contact him at jgree son@timesfreepress.com and follow him on Twitter at @jgreesontfp.

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