How’s your tournament bracket?
Are you one of the 18 folks who have all of the Sweet 16 teams correct among the almost 19 million who filled out an ESPN.com bracket? (And if you are, kudos, because you are certainly leading your office pool.)
Jay Greeson
Did you have 11-seeded Xavier moving along? Even if you did, you likely are not going to be able to keep up with Rebecca Gentry, who last year as a senior at Jasper High School in southern Indiana missed all of three picks.
Yes, three picks. Total. Not first-round picks, not Final Four picks. Three. She missed Northern Iowa beating Texas and Hawaii beating California early and had Syracuse beating UNC in the Final Four, a game that the Tar Heels won. So top that.
Maybe your office pool sheet is in shambles, and that’s OK. Just think if you worked for Warren Buffett, everyone’s favorite billionaire who famously offered $1 billion to anyone who could pick a perfect sheet.
Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathway has arguably the best office pool in the free world. If you jump in that pool – entry fee is nothing – and pick the perfect Sweet 16, you get $1 million a year for the rest of your life.
The person who has a perfect bracket the longest gets $100,000. Every year, meaning Buffett budgets a cool six figures annually to whomever can stay perfect the longest. (It’s good to be the king, huh?)
This year, there was a $1 million prize to anyone who nailed all of the first-round games, and considering the relatively low number of upsets, that was more doable than ever this year. (Yahoo reported that 36 of its entries were 32-for-32 in the first round, which is staggering, considering that in the 18 years of Yahoo’s NCAA tournament contest, there was exactly one entry ever who had a perfect first round.) One Berkshire employee went 31-for-32 this year, with the lone miss being the Marquette-South Carolina game.
Talk about March Madness, right?
For basketball fans, this is a glorious time. But let’s turn this month’s madness into April gladness.
Meet Savannah Marshall, an energetic UTC student who graduated from Soddy-Daisy High School.
Marshall is the director of community service for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Chi Omega sorority. She and her sisters are leading the charge on the second annual Swishes for Wishes basketball tournament, which will be April 8 at 2 p.m. at Maclellan Gym.
This is the second year for the tournament. Last year, student groups on UTC’s campus battled it out in a 3-on-3 format and raised almost $15,000 for the East Tennessee Chapter of the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
Marshall and her folks are opening it up to teams from all areas this time. There will be two draws: One with student organizations, and one that she called the “friends and family” bracket.
And regardless of whether you know a 3-pointer from a three-toed sloth, there is one undeniable winner – the great works done by the East Tennessee Make Wish-a-Wish folks and the kids they help.
“That’s the best thing about this,” Marshall said Monday. “All of the money goes to help the wonderful efforts of the local Make-a-Wish Foundation, and 100 percent of this will go to local children.”
If you have ever known anyone who has been touched by the great misfortune to need Make-a-Wish, then you know the value of its operation.
Marshall says several local businesses – including InView Graphics, Dexter White Construction, Jefferson’s restaurant, the Chattanooga Lookouts and Hank’s Carpet just to name a few – are already on board, but there is only one team (a Make-a-Wish group) entered in the Friends and Family bracket so far.
“It’s 15-minute, half-court games and we’ll have four games going at a time,” said Marshall, who offered her email at savannah-marshall@mocs.utc.edu for players looking to sign up or those hoping to be sponsors. “All of this is student-driven, and our goal is to top what we did last year.”
In a lot of ways, that should always be our goal, right? Do better than we did the previous year, right? Whether you are in March Madness or April Gladness, and especially when those efforts are making sick kids smile.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6343.