Psychic Animals: CultureMap Edition
It's Patch and Zoë versus Obama, O'Brien and Barkley: Whose NCAA bracket willbeat them all?
Obama picks his bracket on ESPN.
Patch continues to amaze (and root for Kansas).Photo by Joel Luks
Our animals' winning bracket
Charles Barkley could use some help from Patch and Zoë.
Zoë predicts another win for Arizona.Photo by Sarah Rufca
"Raise your hand if you had VCU in the Sweet Sixteen — yeah, right," read the Sports Illustrated's NCAA March Madness headline Sunday night.
Actually, we know someone whose bracket survived the slaughter, but he's a little short on hands.
Patch the Pig continued his improbable run toward psychic animal greatness by not only correctly calling every "second-round" game in the Southwest Regional and picking three out of four of the teams from that region in the Sweet Sixteen, including Richmond, VCU and top-seed Kansas, only missing Florida State's defeat of Notre Dame.
Zoë the dog is still matching Patch win-for-win as well, with a perfect eight-for-eight in the first round and correct picks for Duke, Arizona and San Diego State to head to the West Regional in the Sweet Sixteen.
How do Patch and Zoë stand against some of the most famous brackets in the country? Pretty well.
Take, for example, the bracket-picker-in-chief, Barack Obama. He had 23 correct out of 32 games in the round of 64 and has called 10 of the sweet sixteen teams. It's a figure that's impressive enough to put him in the 99.9th percentile of ESPN's bracket competition with 490 points and ahead of every other politico that made a bracket, according to The Hill.
To compare, our quartet of animals have earned 440 points, good enough for the 91st percentile — and that's including Corfu the Cat's disastrous picks in the Southeast. (It's become clear to us he was picking ironically.)
If you take only Zoë and Patch's picks and double the points, they would stand at 560 points, which would make them tied for third place out of the 5.9 million who entered a bracket on ESPN. Is that a fair comparison? No, but we're doing it anyway.
In short, Patch and Zoë are kicking some bracket ass.
Who else is getting owned by Patch and Zoë? Well, there's Snoop Dogg (who has, amazingly, 420 points), Dick Vitale (410), and John McCain (430).
Conan O'Brien is tied with the animal quartet at 440 points.
It's also obvious that our psychic pets rule over Charles Barkley, whose bracket Greg Gumbel compared to "a scene out of CSI with the blood spatter all over the place" over the weekend.
Don't worry, Sir Charles. I know a dog and a pig who'd be happy to help you out next year.
