Presidential Brackets

As I should have guessed Obama and McCain both filled out NCAA tourney brackets, while Hillary Clinton deflected her picks to her husband, who passed. No doubt the couple's 2008 tourney picks will be released to reporters as part of a document dump in the spring of 2017.

McCain is actually running a bracket challenge on his Web site, similar to ours I guess except without a bracket from Ronnie Mervis.

I just looked over McCain's picks, and they're actually admirable. His first-round upsets were of the sensible BCS (and high delegate count) variety: Georgia, Villanova and Arizona, for example. He had all chalk in the Sweet 16 except for three BCS six seeds, which also sounds wise: USC, Marquette and Purdue. His only surprising Elite Eight pick was U-Conn., but I have to think that was more from an Arizona-generated anti-UCLA bias. His Final Four includes three one seeds and those Huskies, whose only fault is their state's indelible blueness.

Obama's picks can be found, among other places, on the New York Times (blech!), and they're a bit less interesting. His only non-chalk Sweet 16 teams are 5 seeds in Clemson and Notre Dame. That's the surest path toward bracket mediocrity. He has two Elite Eight upsets (Stanford and Pitt), and like McCain, he also has a Final Four of three one seeds and a four from the Big East, in his case Pitt. But UNC over UCLA in the final? I mean, that's just giving your money away. Unless he rips up the middle rounds, which he likely won't with that chalkiness (since Clemson is actually favored to advance), he's just not giving himself much of a chance. Advantage McCain.

By Dan Steinberg |  March 21, 2008; 11:51 AM ET  | Category:  College Basketball
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