NCAA Tournament: How To Annoy College Basketball Fans

March Madness is once again upon us.

If you’re a college basketball fan, this is your favorite time of the year.  If you loathe sports than you’re in for three weeks of incessant babbling about bracket busters, buzzer beaters and Busby Berkeley (sorry, I ran out of alliterations about college basketball that begin with “B”).

If you work in an office someone is probably organizing a pool that asks you to fill out a bracket and cough up an ante.  That pool is probably organized by some Jay-Bilas wannabe (a famous college basketball expert) who’s running between cubicles annoying everyone with his “upsets” and “lead-pipe locks.”

Don’t sit there and suffer through these March Madness geeks.   It’s time you start annoying them just as much as they annoy you. Below are four tips that are guaranteed to drive the resident college basketball fans in your office absolutely crazy.

1) Say You Filled Out Your Bracket Using The Craziest Criteria Possible.

Join the office pool and fill out a bracket.  If you don’t know what teams to pick, go online and copy the bracket of an expert.  Then, when the B-ball schmuck starts talking about their bracket, announce that you filled out yours by picking teams with the cutest mascots, or schools with the highest enrollment, or teams with the prettiest uniforms.

College basketball fans HATE this.  They spend hours filling out their brackets and they can’t stand it when someone uses unscientific methods.  They especially can’t stand it when those types of brackets do better than theirs.  Chances are yours will.

2) Root For The Duke Blue Devils.

It’s vogue to hate Duke (a private school for rich, white kids) and chances are the sports-clod in your office is a North Carolina fan (Duke’s rival).  Rooting for Duke will really annoy them but this has a serious drawback.  Duke, despite winning multiple championships, has recently been known for exiting the tournament much sooner than they should.  Even so, rooting for Blue Devils as long as they remain in tournament will definitely annoy those annoying college basketball fans.

3) Constantly Screw Up The Term “Cinderella Team.”

A “Cinderella Team” is an underdog team that has won at least one game and is still in the tournament.  Why big, burly basketball fans use the most feminine name possible is a mystery to everyone.

It will be quite annoying to them when you call a “Cinderella Team” the “Sleeping Beauty Team” or the “Snow White Team.”  When they correct you, make sure to commend them on their vast knowledge of princesses.

4) Alternate between stupid questions and insightful commentary.

The downside to this suggestion is you have to do research and you have to pay attention to who wins and loses.  The upside is you can do this all throughout the tournament.

Ask the college basketball dufus in your office the dumbest question you can devise: “Is there a four-point shot?”  “What if a player wanted to wear sweats?”  “Can you kick the ball through the basket?”

Then, a little while later, offer up some insight:  “UCLA has made the Final Four the last three years but they will struggle to get past VCU.”  “Pittsburgh’s Levance Fields has a great assist-to-turnover ratio, it’s nearly 4-to-1!”  “I like Chris Wright of Dayton.  He’s not only averaging 13 points a game but he’s super athletic.”

Bouncing back and forth between ignorance and informed will drive them nuts.  Your ignorance will annoy them and your facts will show them up.

Follow these tips closely and you will definitely make the college basketball fans in your office completely annoyed.  And if you really put your mind to it, ten next year these sports dorks might not even bring the brackets out.