Buddy Martin Blog: Beware! Sorry, I’m A Terrible Picker!

Made with Ai

To paraphrase the old cliché,

“I couldn’t pick my grandmother out of Count Basie’s band.”

By BuddyMartin

gatorbaitmedia.com 

Ever since Dr. James Naismith nailed up those peach baskets and invented basketball, people have been trying to predict who’s going to win in March.

Let me be the first to tell you: I am possibly the worst forecaster of basketball outcomes since before peach baskets were made. To paraphrase the old cliché, “I couldn’t pick my grandmother out of Count Basie’s band.”

This was not a talent bestowed upon me by the sports gods.

The first clue should have been at home. Every year my wife would beat me like a rented mule in the bracket pool and she didn’t even pretend to know the teams. Even though I covered quite a few tournaments personally.

She picked based on uniform colors. If the shade of blue “pops,” that’s her Final Four team.

Meanwhile I’m interviewing coaches and players, studying matchups, reading box scores, pretending to be some kind of basketball scholar.

Guess who always won?

Her.

By Thursday.

Now understand, I’ve covered sports for more than half a century. I’ve interviewed insiders, broken down zone defenses and watched more basketball games than most people have eaten hot dogs. And yet when it comes to filling out a bracket, I might as well be picking lottery numbers with oven mitts on.

Rodney Dangerfield used to say he got no respect. I get no results or respect, understandably.

When I pick a Cinderella team, the slipper doesn’t even come in the correct size or color. In fact, I’m so bad that when I picked Cinderella one year she sent me a rejection notice.

“Thanks, but we’re going with someone else.”

I’ve tried every method known to man. Coin flips. Pulling names out of a hat. Consulting people who claim to understand analytics. At one point I even considered a fortune teller.

The crystal ball fogged up and refused to cooperate.

I even attempted the “lose every game on purpose” strategy once. Surely, I thought, if I intentionally picked the wrong team every time I might accidentally end up right.

Didn’t work.

Which is why I retired from filling out brackets a few years ago. But like many retirements, it didn’t take.

My friend Paul Wilson of the Sports Blitz on ESPN NW Florida 104.3 recently roped me back in because he wanted me to fill one out for his radio show at the Lone Star Boil House & Sports Bar in Panama City.

Apparently nothing attracts listeners like self-flagellation and watching a grown man publicly sabotage his own credibility.

So here I am again, pretending to be an expert as March Madness officially gets underway Tuesday night with those infernal play-in games.

To be fair, I’ve seen other experts make fools of themselves in sports. I remember former Florida coach Jim McElwain once bragged about how easy it was to find quarterbacks.

“My dog Clarabelle could play quarterback,” he said.

Well, I don’t have a dog, but if I did, I’d hand over the brackets him or her the immediately. They couldn’t do worse than I do.

In fact, I’ve developed a very reliable system for friends who want to win their office pool. Just defer to my terrible real estate acumen.

Follow me around.

Whenever I buy, you sell.

When I sell, you buy.

Or in other words, buy high and sell low, as I generally have done in the transactions on five houses.

And when I fill out my March Madness bracket, simply pick the opposite teams.

Think of it as the George Costanza Method of sports forecasting.

Do the opposite of everything I do.

Trust me — you’ll be far more successful.

On second thought, don’t trust me.

I cannot bear to fill out a whole bracket so let me start with my Final Four and give you a couple other hot teams: Chalk, no Cinderella.

Michigan, Arizona, Florida and tournament favorite Duke. I will take the privilege of picking my winner just before the round of 16.

I love how Arkansas, Vandy and Michigan are playing, but let me hold off on the Gators. The loss to Vandy wasn’t  a disaster, but it wasn’t nothing either.  Remembering that no team coming in on hot streak wins it — the last one being Indiana in 1976.

Forget picking an underdog #16 over  #1.

Otherwise, forget everything I just said.