League Basketball Pool

Ryan Noonan

Ryan Noonan is an economist with a small federal agency. Fields in which he considers himself reasonably well-informed: literature, college athletics, video games, food and beverage, the Supreme Court. Fields in which he considers himself an expert: none. He can be found on the Twitter or reached by email.

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49 Responses

  1. BSK says:

    IN!

    And who says we can’t gamble???  The possible stakes, as stated, could be very fun and interesting.Report

  2. James Hanley says:

    Sure, you would have to do this in the one year I just haven’t found time to pay attention to college hoops.  But count me in, all the way.Report

    • BSK in reply to James Hanley says:

      Pre-emptive excuse, Hanley?  Wouldn’t have pegged you as much of a whiner…Report

      • James Hanley in reply to BSK says:

        That’s just cold, BSK. But in fact since the Rose Bowl, I just haven’t been able to get into college sports this year, until the last week and a half. I don’t know why. But Purdue’s surprising victory in the Big 10 women’s tourney, and the Purdue men’s defeat of Michigan at Ann Arbor (the only team to beat them there this year), got my juices going again.

        I enjoyed seeing Duke get humiliated at home, too.  Of course I would have enjoyed watching UNC get humiliated as well.Report

    • Tod Kelly in reply to James Hanley says:

      James, if the League is anything like every office I’ve ever worked at, the winner is going to be someone that’s never watched basketball and uses some method like, “the place I’d rather visit” as a method for choosing each game’s winner.Report

  3. Nob Akimoto says:

    I’m game.Report

  4. I’m in. And I like the suggested prize.

    I think we did one of these a few years ago, but I can’t remember who won.Report

  5. Alex Plungis says:

    I would love to do it!Report

  6. Randy Harris says:

    I’m in.Report

  7. Tod Kelly says:

    Totally, totally in.

    Who’s going to volunteer to do the scoring? Or is there some kind of online thing that will do it for us.Report

  8. In.  I’d also like to add to the prize pool by offering the winner the right to control my gravatar for the next year.Report

  9. Burt Likko says:

    I’m in. I know next to nothing about college hoops. This will not stop me from participating, and it shouldn’t stop anyone else, either. Mark Ryan, will you set up a bracket pool at ESPN or Yahoo sports or some similar site?

    A thought: can you set up the rules so that there is some sort of bonus for picking an underdog?Report

  10. Ryan Bonneville says:

    For those asking, I am planning to use Yahoo. I will check it out to see what kind of scoring tweaks are available.Report

  11. Count me in. I would prefer ESPN but I’m open to Yahoo.Report

  12. James Hanley says:

    If I win, I’m going to have Burt write one post containing all his planned Supreme Court’s greatest cases, and Mark’s gravatar will be the mascot of his most hated team.Report

    • Fish in reply to James Hanley says:

      Heh.  Getting Burt to write another “great cases” post was exactly what I was thinking, too.  But all of them at once?  That’s just evil.Report

    • Wait — you mean a list of the cases, right? Because otherwise you’re risking getting something like:

      …And then there was McCullough v. Maryland, and Justice Marshall was a bastard in that one too but he was right even though he was a bastard about it. State can’t tax Federal institutions, it’d make a mockery of the Supremacy Clause. So then we jump on up to Dred Scott, and whoo boy! that one got people ticked off too. Taney said once a slave, always a slave, and slaves can’t sue their masters. So we had that whole Civil War thing and three new amendments to the Constitution to straighten that out, but you know, the Court never really overruled it. And then there were some butchers in Louisiana and that made a hash of labor law, and we sent a lot of Japanese folks to concentration camps in the middle of nowhere because the Army wanted to do it and no one had the balls to stand up to the Army, but later we made a “one man, one vote” rule that was kind of a big deal and we said “oh, hey, sorry about that whole concentration camp thing” when nearly everyone who’d been in them was dead already. We had separate but equal until we didn’t have it anymore, and abortion was illegal until it wasn’t anymore only now it kind of can be again except when it can’t, and then gay sex was illegal until it wasn’t anymore, and then the Supreme Court voted for George W. Bush to be President. And everyone was pissed off about every bit of it. The end.

      So I could do that. Or you could be happy with a list and let me do a decent job of each case over time.Report

  13. Dan Miller says:

    Count me in.Report

  14. Patrick Cahalan says:

    I’m in.

    I will lose, but I’m going to talk trash all the way.Report

  15. Plinko says:

    In!

    I’ve also barely paid attention this year – but when I’ve won work pools it’s usually in seasons when I paid zero attention.Report