Taking Tournament Brackets to the Next Level

I don’t follow college basketball. But that doesn’t matter. My brackets consistently hold up as well as the brackets of friends who obsess over the sport. That’s why the NCAA tournament is so much fun. It’s structured yet random. A lot of people get to play but only one wins.

Come to think of it, it’s a lot like presidential politics. And, really, wouldn’t the 2008 race be far less tedious if we made it a bracket system? Clinton and Obama as the one seeds on the left. Giuliani and McCain as the one seeds on the right. Then suddenly everybody’s brackets are busted when eight-seed Huckabee takes down two-seed Romney in the first round. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a lot more fun?

Get rid of the primaries and conventions. We do the whole thing every four years in November. Call it November N-sanity. We all go to the polls every weekend and vote the candidates down until one Democrat and one Republican remain. Then we throw a big party, get drunk and vote on who gets to cut the nets down on the White House basketball court.

Simple. Efficient. And, you know, pretty dang American.