With a wild weekend of college hoops in the books, you might be realizing that your 2011 Men’s Basketball Tournament Bracket is beyond recognition (if your bracket is still alive and functioning, I hate you). Your Sweet 16 teams might not be cutting down the nets, but don’t cut up that bracket just yet. At All Sports Talk, we are determined to get you some more use out of your bracket, even if you’re like me and had Pitt and Notre Dame going to the Final 4 (what a huge mistake that was).
Save the Environment
- Use Your Busted Bracket to mop up your tears instead of Kleenex. Sure, it might leave you with papercuts on your eyelids, but you are probably too numb by this point to feel it.
Apply for a Coaching Job
- Think you could have done a better coaching job than Bruce Pearl or Rick Pitino? Print off your resume on the back of your busted bracket. If your past, relevant, job history is a little light, you can use the empty space to draw up some inbounds plays for the Washington Huskies.
Show Off Your Artistic Side
- Your bracket might not have gotten very far in the office pool, but with a little creativity you could wind up with new artwork for your cubicle. Sure, you didn’t pick Kansas to make it out of the Southwest bracket, but you can claim to have been a fan all year when people comment on your new Jayhawk origami artwork.
Try to Save Face
- Claim that you grabbed the wrong bracket off of the copy machine and present the pool admin with your “actual” bracket. Please don’t be obvious though – there isn’t a person in the country that had VCU making it this far and your bracket will smell of lies and shame if you try to pull that off.
Ruin Everyone Else’s Buzz
- Your bracket is busted, but that just means that everyone else’s bracket is just a ticking time bomb. Remind your friends and coworkers that they are just one Duke or Ohio State loss from being down in last place with you. Continue creating scenarios on the back of your bracket that can give you a conceivable chance of winning. If you’re not happy about your bracket, nobody else should be either.
Jump Ship
- Filling out a March Madness bracket? That’s so cliché. If you really want a challenge, filling out an NIT Bracket is where it’s at. Claim that you filled out the office bracket as a joke and that you really took your time with the NIT picks. Boast about how you are in first place in 3 separate NIT pools. You can do this confidently because nobody will care enough about the NIT to fact check you.