Barack Obama isn't the only sports fan who picked the Kansas Jayhawks to win the NCAA basketball Tournament, commonly referred to as the "Road to the Final Four." Forty-plus percent of Americans did so, too, according to ESPN. I was among them. I had Kansas over Kentucky in the finals. My wife, Sera, who knows absolutely nothing about college basketball has Syracuse over Duke in the finals.
Well, Syracuse and Kentucky, two of three other No. 1 seeds, are out. Duke, the last remaining No. 1 seed, made the final four. No wonder it's also called March Madness.
Right now, I'm ahead of my wife, 520 to 490 points, based on the bracket totals, but if Duke makes it to the finals, my wife wins our two-person pool.
Why she picked Duke: "I don't know. I heard of them."
To this day, she doesn't know why she picked Syracuse either except one night we tried to get a seat at a local restaurant and there were a bunch of Syracuse fans rooting for them during the Big East tournament. To this day, she doesn't know they are the Syracuse "Orangemen" and she doesn't care.
Sera played it relatively safe, picking the higher seeded teams through the early rounds and having all four No. 1 seeds in the Final Four. The only real difference was I had Kansas State going while she had Syracuse in the Western bracket, but then a No. 5 seed, Butler knocked off Syracuse and then Kansas State.
So now my wife will be rooting for Duke, with no knowledge or history of the Blue Devils' championship past with the likes of Christiam Laetner and Bobby Hurley or the rich tradition of Michigan State, another of the final four, which had a player in 1979 named Magic Johnson or even that its current coach, Tom Izzo has taken the team to the Final Four six times in the last 12 years, including a championship and the finals last year.
In case you are wondering, or even care, it's Michigan State vs. Butler and Duke vs. West Virginia in this year's Final Four, with both games Saturday and the championship on Monday.