March Madness

Well, it’s a great day…I set up my just for fun pool once again. It’s time to put on your prognostication pinstripes and pick your poison in the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament. Each year, infants through old folks, experts and clueless folks alike join my pool, trying to win the undying glory of entering the Hall of Fame. This will be “Gregg’s Group 9”, the ninth time I’ve hosted a pool, and as always, the two goals are to have fun and to have more people involved than ever before. So, tell your friends and friends of friends to join up. No excuses! Aubrey beat me when she was nine months old, picking pieces of paper with numbers on them. You can do this!

For the uninitiated, on Sunday March 13, they will set up a bracket of 64 teams who will play a series of games over 3 weeks. Between Sunday March 13 and Thursday morning March 17 (that’s when the first game starts), you will pick who you think will win ALL the games. Then, we sit back and watch the games and see how we’ve done. So, it’s a one time investment of effort to pick your teams, and then three weeks of fun watching the results!! What a deal! Where else can you get so much family fun for so little effort?

I have the ESPN website host my pool. You can find all the rules here, but you don’t need to read all that gobbley gook. Here’s how to join my pool:

• Step 1: get an account on ESPN, if you haven’t already got one in previous years (uncheck all the exclusive updates, offers, and newsletters to avoid spam).
• Step 2: login with your brand new (or old) account on this page. Create an entry in the Tournament Challenge game.
• Step 3: try this link. This should make it easy. On the right side, down a little bit, you’ll see the password box filled in. Below it, click “Join this group”. You should be in! If for some crazy reason it doesn’t work, go to step 4.
• Step 4: if it didn’t work, click on “Create or Join a Group”. In the search box, type in Gregg’s Group 9 and click “search by name”. It’ll come up with 1 search result.
• Step 5: click on the link Gregg’s Group 9 below where it says “Group Name”.
• Step 6: in the center, down a little ways, you’ll see a link that says “Join this Group”. Click the link.
• Step 7: in the password box on the right, enter gregg. Click “Join this Group”. You’re in!

If you have problems… let me know.