Today's Apocalyptic Sign: March Madness Savant

I am not sure how many of you will be interested in this post because if you are not up for the March Madness then you'll have to suffer. In all fairness I don't watch the season games in college basketball but I do watch the March tournament. This year has been a doozy and these kids play their hearts out just to go to school. Anway here we go.

I just spent an exciting afternoon and evening getting blurry-eyed watching this year's NCAA Sweet Sixteen round. I am a little pissed that Ohio State is already out but today's games were pretty good. Kentucky just got their ass handed to them so another No 1 seed is shot down in flames. West Virginia made nothing but 3-point shots in the first half on their way to downing the Wildcats of Kentucky. Kind of a minor upset.

Butler upended Kansas St so a 5-seed is in the final four for the first time in forever.

{Look at me being all sports reportery and all!}

My post about the title above is several days late but it still worth a mention.

There was an austistic teenager who supposedly picked all 48 games of the first two rounds of this tournament correctly. His complete bracket can be seen here.

They claim the odds of anyone being able to do this is 1 in more than 13,000,000.

What???

This kid picked his bracket and his brother helped him enter his picks in an on-line bracket manager offered at CBS Sports. He did not even enter a bracket where he could make money for picking rounds correctly. After the first two rounds he had to show his brother his sheet with the 48 winners. His brother was stunned and after reveiwing it several times told his mother they need to alert the media.

Then I read some of the comments to the story and of course the skeptics are out in full force. They claim that any bracket manager of these certain CBS braket manager sites can go in and change anything after the games and make a bracket look perfect. What a buzzkill.

This kid claims to have spent the season watching the teams and listening to announcers and memorizing stats. He filled out his bracket. He did the impossible. As with most things in this world today the naysayers come out in a hurry when the impossible happens.

I have to ask, why would this family subject themselves and their autistic son (although he is by no means severely austistic) to derision and ridicule of national proportion...for a basketball bracket with no monetary gain? I suppose there are people out there that would do this but the family does not strike one as being "that way".

These are not balloon boy parents or whacked out nutjobs like that. They do not appear to be looking for their 15 minutes of fame by way of exploiting their son using the NCAA tourney as the vehicle. A search for the term "autistic picks perfect ncaa" yields almost 92,000 results.

I say so what, if its real let him enjoy it, if not so what! They didn't scam anybody, they got no dinero for it. And personally, I want to believe that someone, anyone could do this. It is (would be) an amazing feat and helps you believe in miracles. Or it is truly another sign of the apocalypse. Judge for yourself.

I am not sure I know who I am going to root for in the finals...maybe I WILL give Alex a call!

Peace