I don’t even know who I am anymore.
Today, on the first day of March Madness, I voluntarily scheduled three different meetings for this afternoon. Three. And I never even thought twice about it.
The high school student who shared my classmates’ glee when the TV cart rolled into the classroom on the first Thursday and Friday of the tournament would shake his head in disgust if he could see me today, and not just because of my salt-and-pepper, jowl-y, middle-aged decline. I’m not even the guy I was in 2019—the hero who reserved the large office building conference room so that I could display every game on enormous, wall-mounted monitors as my adoring colleagues and I watched them.
Instead, I am this broken-down husk of a sports fan who knows almost nothing about college basketball anymore, outside of the fact that my Richmond Spiders went a woeful 10-22, and that the SEC somehow managed to get 14 of its teams into the NCAA bracket.
Armed with the knowledge that the almighty committee believes the fourteenth-best team in the SEC is more deserving of a bid than the second-best team in the Atlantic 10, I feel much better about my decision to (largely) ignore college basketball before late March.
With all of that said, I’ve obviously created a bracket this year. It’s below, and it might be the most conservative bracket I’ve ever picked. If the #1 and #2 seeds don’t do well, I’m toast. It’s almost more like a women’s bracket, with the top two seeds consistently advancing with little difficulty until the regional finals.
Speaking of, I’m even including my women’s bracket this year as a bonus. That’s largely because my actual women’s bracket was in the 99.9th percentile last year until Iowa lost in the finals—and I still finished in the 84th percentile. This luck-masquerading-as-expertise has emboldened me.
Except when it comes to the picks themselves. I’m ultra-conservative on both brackets this time around. My men’s semi-finals feature two #1 vs. #2 match-ups, with overall #1 seed Auburn winning it all. My women’s Final Four has three #1 seeds, although I do stick my neck out by daring to pick a #2 seed to win the title, as I have UConn and Geno Auriemma collecting their 12th trophy.
I guess it makes sense that both brackets were equally reserved this year, since I watched about as much women’s basketball as I did men’s in 2024-25.
So, fans, enjoy these brackets, prepared by someone who is barely aware of the sport, and who, as he sits here late in the afternoon on the first day of the tournament, hasn’t even so much as turned his TV on:
The Axis of Ego 
Let’s All Make Fun of Tom’s Brackets (2025 Edition)
Today, on the first day of March Madness, I voluntarily scheduled three different meetings for this afternoon. Three. And I never even thought twice about it.
The high school student who shared my classmates’ glee when the TV cart rolled into the classroom on the first Thursday and Friday of the tournament would shake his head in disgust if he could see me today, and not just because of my salt-and-pepper, jowl-y, middle-aged decline. I’m not even the guy I was in 2019—the hero who reserved the large office building conference room so that I could display every game on enormous, wall-mounted monitors as my adoring colleagues and I watched them.
Instead, I am this broken-down husk of a sports fan who knows almost nothing about college basketball anymore, outside of the fact that my Richmond Spiders went a woeful 10-22, and that the SEC somehow managed to get 14 of its teams into the NCAA bracket.
Armed with the knowledge that the almighty committee believes the fourteenth-best team in the SEC is more deserving of a bid than the second-best team in the Atlantic 10, I feel much better about my decision to (largely) ignore college basketball before late March.
With all of that said, I’ve obviously created a bracket this year. It’s below, and it might be the most conservative bracket I’ve ever picked. If the #1 and #2 seeds don’t do well, I’m toast. It’s almost more like a women’s bracket, with the top two seeds consistently advancing with little difficulty until the regional finals.
Speaking of, I’m even including my women’s bracket this year as a bonus. That’s largely because my actual women’s bracket was in the 99.9th percentile last year until Iowa lost in the finals—and I still finished in the 84th percentile. This luck-masquerading-as-expertise has emboldened me.
Except when it comes to the picks themselves. I’m ultra-conservative on both brackets this time around. My men’s semi-finals feature two #1 vs. #2 match-ups, with overall #1 seed Auburn winning it all. My women’s Final Four has three #1 seeds, although I do stick my neck out by daring to pick a #2 seed to win the title, as I have UConn and Geno Auriemma collecting their 12th trophy.
I guess it makes sense that both brackets were equally reserved this year, since I watched about as much women’s basketball as I did men’s in 2024-25.
So, fans, enjoy these brackets, prepared by someone who is barely aware of the sport, and who, as he sits here late in the afternoon on the first day of the tournament, hasn’t even so much as turned his TV on:
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