Nigel Holmes - The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything

The Enlightened Bracketologist

Also by Mark Reiter

What Got You Here Won't Get You There (with Marshall Goldsmith)

The Creative Habit (with Twyla Tharp)

Also by Richard Sandomir

Don't Worry, Stop Sweating...Use Deodorant! (with Rick Wolff)

Life for Real Dummies (with Rick Wolff)

The Joy of Baldness

Bald Like Me

The Enlightened

Bracketologist

The Final Four of Everything

Edited by

Mark Reiter and

Richard Sandomir

Designed by Nigel Holmes

BLOOMSBURY

Copyright 2007 by Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

All papers used by Bloomsbury USA are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests.

The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for. style="text-align:

eISBN: 978-1-59691-947-1

"Final Four" is a registered trademark of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and is used herein with permission of the NCAA.

First U.S. Edition 2007

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Designed and typeset by Nigel Holmes

Printed in the United States of America by RR Donnelley, Crawfordsville

To Griffin Miller,

who will always win the

most important bracket.

R.S.

To Marie, Nick,

Will, and Hilde.

M.R.

CONTENTS

What is enlightenment?

Better question: What is Bracketology?

Bracketology is a way of seeing the world so that we can become more enlightenedabout what we like, favor, prefer, abhor, or abjure. (Bracketology can even help us determine if we prefer the word abhor to abjure.) It is a system that helps us make clearer and cleaner decisions about what is good, better, best in our world.

Let's bring it down to a real-world level.

Has this ever happened to you?

Someone asks you,"What's your favorite movie?" Not a deep question, but a probing one, something that comes up occasionally among reasonably curious folkor men and women on their second date. Your favorite movie is a classic single-question personality profile that "reveals" you, an easy-to-apply litmus test that gives folks a snapshot of who you are or think you are or want the world to think you are. Whether that film is Die Hard or Four Weddings and a Funeral or Top Hat or Grand Illusion or Reservoir Dogs or Persona or Groundhog Day, your answer signals your worldliness and sophistication, your sense of humor, and, most particularly, your individuality.

If you're like most people you have a default response that is either The Godfather TheGodfather Part II, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Gone With the Wind, or The Wizard of Oz.

But have you ever methodically listed all the movies that have charmed you, or that you've seen more than a dozen times, or that you have on both VHS and DVD formatsand pitted them against each other in an intellectual knockout tournament to determine, once and for all, your definitive personal champion?

If you haven't, how can you say you truly know yourself? How can you honestly reveal yourself to the people you love? If you haven't systematically eliminated all the other worthy contenders for favorite movie, how can you blithely pick, say, My Cousin Vinny and hope to achieve enlightenment?

Bracketologythe practice of parsing people, places, and things into discrete one-on-one matchups to determine which of the two is superior or preferableworks because it is simple. What could be simpler then breaking down a choice into either/or, black or white, this one or that one?

For example, not long ago I was discussing favorite foods with a friend of mine. She happens to be a successful dancer and choreographer, a woman of extraordinary physical discipline, intellectual rigor, and moral certitude. Being an athlete in perpetual training, she has always been careful about what she eats. So I asked her to name her last bite on earththe one item of food she craves regardless of its impact on her waistline or cardiovascular health. It's one of those desert island questions that I find intriguing and revealing. Her answer:

a hard-boiled egg

I was surprisedand I wasn't. It wouldn't be my first choice. But given her life of monk like asceticism, it was the perfect food. Simple, elegant, practically colorless, and loaded with protein. No excess. No spare parts (not even the yolk).

A few months later, when the subject came up again, she surprised me by changing her mind. Her last bite on earth, she insisted, would be a bowl of popcorn. This change of heart was very uncharacteristic. I've always known her to be a woman who knows her mind. And yet here she was, on a matter involving the most basic issue of taste, flip-flopping.

It wouldn't have happened if she knew Bracketology.

Ask me the same question and I wouldn't hesitate to choose a Hebrew National salami. I know this because I've pitted this marvel of encased beef, salt, hydrolyzed soy protein, garlic, paprika, and other mysterious flavorings against every other food I love. And it always comes out on top. I've done it using Bracketology, in a competition that looks like this:

You could argue that these foods, from the candy to the junk food to the fine wine to the robust meals, represent not only one individual's palate but also a lifetime of associated memories, like Proust's madeleine. What you were celebrating with that great Burgundy. Or what sorrow you were drowning with the Spring bank whisky. What great movie you were watching when you roared through the value-sized bag of popcorn. Or what stress you were relieving with that quart of Rocky Road. Who you were with when you first visited Peter Luger's Steak House. Or what deliriously happy segment of childhood you mentally call up every time you open a box of Good & Plenty.

In that sense, choosing your last bite is not necessarily just about food. It's quite possibly about your entire life. In opting for one last bite over another you may also be revealing to yourselfperhaps for the first timethe who, what, when, and where in your personal narrative that lifts your spirit and puts a smile on your face. Can you think of a better path to enlightenment?

When I consider all that is good and life-affirming and happy in this worldnot to mention indelibly tastefulI choose a Hebrew National salami. Go figure.

In this book, we have.

So can you.

Contrary to popular belief, not to mention that melodramatic, end-of-the-final song, there is no single shining moment in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. There are actually lots of shining momentsthree weeks of them every March, some of them very good (Bryce Drew's shot against Ole Miss) and some of them very bad (Mr. Webber, you are flat out of time-outs). Shining moments linger in memory or have a lasting impact, and don't need a song, or Dick Vitale, to validate them.