March Madness is here and you’re probably going to be spending the better part of your Monday morning filling out your bracket and getting your office pool set up.
Along with the all of the great things that come with March Madness come some unfortunate moments, and I’m not just talking about upsets.
Here are the five most-annoying people who are in EVERYONE’S NCAA office pool.
1. “Clueless Joe” – There’s always one of these people in your pool. They’ll see you collecting money around the office and naively ask what all of the hubbub is about. When you tell them, they’ll obviously want to join in and that’s when the trouble starts. Expect your inbox to be flooded with dozens of emails asking about how college basketball works, when the games are and what exactly does the 5-12 upset mean. While you may have the patience to deal with that, the worst part about this guy or gal is that they will probably wind up winning your pool, because heck, who didn’t see Colorado beating Belmont in the National Title game.
2. The “Expert” – “Did you know that so-and-so finished in the top three in the nation in assist to turnover ratio when playing on a Tuesday afternoon?” When this person says that to you, run away. No one that casually watches college basketball should know that statistic and if they do, they’re probably certifiably insane. The “expert” is the person in your office pool who will be forcing his or her opinions on you because they think they are some sort of second coming of Dick Vitale. You know you’ve been around them too long when they start saying “Pick Oregon over Oklahoma State Babay!” Take your RPI, BPI and all of your other advanced metrics and fill out your own bracket. I’m going with who I think the best team is, not what some machine or wannabe analyst suggests.
3. The “I’ll get you back” guy – So the time comes to collect the filled out brackets and the decided upon amount of money (wait, people gamble on this stuff?) to enter into the prize pool and you get to the one person who has no cash on them. No, I don’t want lunch, or a drink or some sort of souvenir mug that’s been sitting in your middle drawer for six months, just fork over the cash. Here’s the most annoying part about this person: YOU KNOW MARCH MADNESS IS COMING! Stop at a bank, get it from under your mattress, break your piggy bank, I don’t care, just pay when you hand in your bracket, this isn’t rocket science.
4. The “Overreactor” – There’s 19 minutes left in the first half and Kansas is trailing Western Kentucky when all of a sudden you hear a crash. The person who just threw his mouse and keyboard onto the ground and is cursing Bill Self for being the worst coach is college basketball is the Overreactor. This is the person in your pool who is treating every single possession like it is the last shot in the title game. Chill out, it’s one minute into the first game of a No. 16 vs a No.1, that upset has never happened before and it likely will not any time soon. In the mean time, go talk to IT about getting some new equipment.
5. The “Hound” – “What place am I in?” “Can I still win it all?” “Who’s got Indiana in the Final Four?” This is the person who will be hounding you every waking second you are in the office for the next four weeks, begging for constant updates about the pool standings and who has which teams. We’re at the point where there is this thing called the Internet and it will give you updated standings and allow you to look at all of your opponents’ brackets. Use that and let me go back to watching the other 15 games that are taking place today, thank you very much.
asulla-heffinger@nypost.com