I must admit I do not follow much college basketball other than Xavier. We’ve kept our season tickets despite many times asking, “Is it really worth it?” when the kids were infants and we didn’t make it to many games due to exhaustion, illness, work travels, etc. But now it’s a fun thing to do WITH the kids and we’re glad we’ve never gotten rid of them.
As Selection Sunday concluded and March Madness really approached, I started to see posts on Facebook, Instagram, etc. about filling about brackets with your kids. Heck, I haven’t filled out a bracket in years. It sounded fun and the kids love a good game of anything. I printed off four brackets yesterday (click HERE to get to the one I printed – it’s not too late to do it with your kids!) and sat the kids down at the table when Stella got off of the bus. I quickly explained a simple version of what we were going to do. Basically, “I read off two teams and you pick a winner!” We did one whole side of the bracket before Stella figured out that one of the teams had to be better than the other and she then started asking about stats before her making choice. And then they ALL wanted to fill out the other half themselves. So the process time immediately went from this-isn’t-so-bad to this-is-going-to-take-FOREVER.
In the end, it was a fun guessing game. Biggest observation? My kids really do not understand ANYTHING about UC. {and that’s fine by me…bwahahahahaha} Stella kept choosing Cincinnati, because, DUH that’s where we live. She even had them being the overall winner. (I had already broken the news to her that XU probably wasn’t going all the way when she grilled me on their stats.) In the end I said to her, “Well, daddy’s going to be surprised that you are choosing to cheer for the Bearcats”. And she LOST IT. She was seriously crying her eyes out. She composed herself enough to say, “WHAT?!?! BUT I CHOSE CINCINNATI, NOT THE BOO BEARCATS!!!” And so the lesson about University of CINCINNATI = Bearcats began. And then she cried again. “Can I PLEASE change my choices?” I explained that it was ok for her to pick UC, we were not really mad, and they {sigh} had a better chance at winning than XU, but Stella was determined to switch everything around and is now cheering for OHIO State University…still keeping it local.
And POOR HENRY. Although all three of us tried to convince him otherwise, he chose Xavier to go all the way. You can barely see where he circled them in red. And after the second play-in game, his entire bracket is pretty much garbage. Oh well.
Do you fill out a March Madness bracket?
Do/does your kid(s)?
Who are you cheering for this year?
