The bracket has been set for all of 31 minutes and already Syracuse sophomore Paul Pitt has allowed the madness to take over him.
According to sources, Pitt has neglected to shower for four straight days and has consumed a mere two meals in those 96 hours.
“Of course I’m concerned about him,” said roommate Charlie Oh. “The dude has not left ESPN.com since before the Big East tournament started. I mean, I thought there was only so much analysis you can read, but apparently there’s more.”
Lots more. On Friday, Oh noticed that Pitt had moved past the stage of comparing his prospective 68 teams’ average points per game, points allowed per game and strength of schedule and onto more eccentric factors such as average team GPA, tempo of each team’s fight song and, the strangest of all, median length of team members’ last names. (According to Pitt, players with long names typically shoot well from beyond the arc, making them dangerous in the tourney.)
Despite Oh’s concerns, Pitt sees nothing wrong with his actions (or hygiene).
“Charlie can hate all he wants,” said Pitt from a comfortable distance at which I was unable to waft the stale aroma of Hot Pockets and Hi-C. “But after I enter the field of 68 into my NCAA March Madness ’12 on my PS3 and simulate each game in a best of five scenario (for consistency’s sake) and account for injuries, I’m bound to have a winning bracket. And Charlie, picking his favorite colors like an idiot, will be groveling for me to buy him beer with the winnings.”
Vegas odds put Oh’s color-preference technique at 2:1 odds, while Pitt’s research-to-death method sits well behind at 999:1.
