{"id":4537,"date":"2015-03-29T09:18:13","date_gmt":"2015-03-29T13:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=4537"},"modified":"2015-03-29T10:02:45","modified_gmt":"2015-03-29T14:02:45","slug":"the-best-bracket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=4537","title":{"rendered":"the best bracket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/photo-1421091242698-34f6ad7fc088.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-4540\" src=\"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/photo-1421091242698-34f6ad7fc088-300x207.jpeg\" alt=\"photo-1421091242698-34f6ad7fc088\" width=\"300\" height=\"207\" \/><\/a>We always have to pick one&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Best Dressed Man <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Sexiest Man Alive <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Best Picture <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Best New Artist <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>The #1 New York Times Best Seller <\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We make things into a competition&#8230; for everything from presidential nominations to \u201cwho will be the next Pope\u201d to the People\u2019s Choice Awards. We\u2019re a competitive people. We like to crown one winner.<\/p>\n<p>Such awareness leads me to the competitive manifestation found in the madness of March. Again today, college basketball teams will pair off on the tournament hardwood &#8212; each fighting to be the best&#8230; each wanting to win.<\/p>\n<p>Many of us have joined in the contest &#8212; filling out our own brackets &#8212; entering either the annual office pool or family challenge, or perhaps even, simply competing for a point of personal pride. According to Slate.com in recent years, an estimated 45% of us filled out a bracket <em>(&#8230;granted, approximately 43% of us have also already wadded them up and thrown them away).<\/em> As evidenced by the 11.57 million people who completed a bracket on ESPN, \u201cbracketology\u201d has taken on a new meaning indeed.<\/p>\n<p>I was struck this week by something else I found wadded up. This sheet was crumpled in the corner in one of my son\u2019s upstairs bedrooms <em>(&#8230;I know&#8230; shocking that I would find <strong>anything<\/strong> on the floor of a teenager\u2019s room&#8230;). <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Yet when I slowly unfurled this crumpled sheet, I found a goldmine of wisdom. Here, roughly designed with undoubtedly valiant efforts at perceived symmetry, was a bracket created by my 13 year old, sports fan son with special needs.<\/p>\n<p>He did not use a pre-printed bracket, however; he made up his own.<\/p>\n<p>On both the left and the right, he crafted slots for 16 teams, thus including 32 entries. But this bracket had a different title. It said nothing about the 2015 Men\u2019s NCAA Championship. Instead, boldly printed on the top of the page was:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBRACKIT FOR BEST MAN AND TEAM\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then down the sides of the page, I sat still as I read the names. There I would find the listings of my son\u2019s father&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; his brothers&#8230; some aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins.<\/p>\n<p>I did chuckle &#8212; realizing Josh must have ran out of names to write &#8212; when added in on his \u201cbrackit\u201d were LeBron James, the University of Florida, and our cat, Zipper. But I loved and admired his precious list.<\/p>\n<p>My only pondering was why he never completed the bracket &#8212; why it was instead crumpled and discarded. So I soon asked, <em>\u201cWhy no best man and team?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n<p>To which my wise son responded, <em>\u201cThere are lots of good teams. It doesn\u2019t matter. Winning and losing are the same&#8230; if you win, you\u2019re awesome; if you lose, you\u2019re still awesome.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It didn\u2019t matter. No one had to win.<\/p>\n<p>Respectfully&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>AR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We always have to pick one&#8230; Best Dressed Man Sexiest Man Alive Best Picture Best New Artist The #1 New York Times Best Seller We make things into a competition&#8230; for everything from presidential nominations to \u201cwho will be the next Pope\u201d to the People\u2019s Choice Awards. We\u2019re a competitive people. We like to crown &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=4537\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;the best bracket&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[514,513],"class_list":["post-4537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-event","tag-2015-ncaa-mens-basketball-tournament","tag-winning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4537"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4543,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4537\/revisions\/4543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}