By the time that the first or second round of the NCAA Tournament had ended (depending on how you feel about calling the play-in games the first round, like people have been doing), 23-year old Brad Binder had sort of become a star in the world of people who are obsessed with college basketball. After Matthew Berry Tweeted the statistics of the remaining perfect brackets after Thursday’s action, ESPN claimed there were no perfect brackets remaining in its own NCAA Tournament challenge as of Friday’s games, but Yahoo! confirmed that Binder was the only person in one of its pools that was still perfect heading into Saturday’s action.
The day started off great for Binder, whose Twitter follower count shot up because of his success, as he kept racking up the wins, and he probably would have been hyperventilating over the idea of all the money that Warren Buffett was offering, if only he’d entered the Quicken Loans competition and not just the regular Yahoo! tournament. Oops. Alas, it wouldn’t have mattered, thanks to those jerkass Dayton Flyers*.
“It’s crazy!” he told Yahoo Sports late Friday night. “Still can’t believe it!”
The 15 minutes of fame for the 23-year-old from Buffalo Grove, Ill., continued Saturday as his perfect bracket rolled on.
Florida won. 33 for 33.
Louisville won. 34 for 34.
Michigan won. 35 for 35.
San Diego State? Yeah, it won, too. 36 for 36.
And then … Dayton, an 11 seed, beating Syracuse, the former No. 1 team in the country, 55-53. It seemed like a lock until it wasn’t. (Via Yahoo! Sports with a video interview)
Those pesky Flyers are just ruining the fun for everyone, aren’t they? But Binder had nothing to lose and everything to gain for his incredible luck and/or knowledge of college basketball, and at the end of it all, he was happy to have had a little extra fun.
Quick side note for the “haters” out there: If you’re the kind of person who thinks it’s cool to talk shit to a guy on Twitter because he’s having a little fun bragging about being the only person left in the entire Yahoo! NCAA Tournament pool with a perfect bracket, you are very, very sad. Even worse, if you’re the kind of person who creates a fake Twitter profile to pretend to be him, you’re even sadder. Seriously, you are a poor, lonely scrotum wart and you should go look in the mirror and tell yourself that you’re not even worth the exotic animal feces that Buffett pays people to scrape off of his $10,000 shoes.
*Just kidding, I love Dayton so much for winning.
