There comes a time in every man’s life when he realizes his kids do not possess some preternatural ability to fill out NCAA March Madness brackets. And thus he must come to terms with the fact that he will not be able to exploit encourage their abilities to retire early in some warm climate on a beach. That realization came for me this month.
The experiment worked like this: During a car ride I asked Wesley which teams would win in the East and West regions while Jillian made picks for the Southwest and Southeast. I would say something like “Wesley, Washington or Georgia?” He would make his choice and I jotted it down. We repeated this for every match up flipping a coin to see who would win it all (How else would I choose between Wesley’s pick and Jillian’s?).
By flipping a coin you’d expect that each kid would have made at least 15 correct choices. How did my kids do? Wesley got 13. Not bad, but less than random choice would have suggested. Jillian didn’t do quite as well on sheer numbers. She managed only 9 correct choices, but did manage to pick one team that made it to the final four.
So I won’t be betting any large sums based on the kids’ picks any time soon. Do you suppose they are any better at football?
**PS: The title comes from an excellent The Mountain Goats song “Insurance Fraud #2“, which incidentally has always made me think of Adrianne.
