Gaining Perspective of NCAA Tournament Through Conference Postseason

So CBS offered this pretty cool prize for picking a perfect conference tournament bracket among the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, Big East and Pac 12. You could either get $3,000 or an IHOP gift card, so it was a win-win situation. I went in thinking that picking these games would be easy as hell, but it turns out that teams like Rutgers and St John's can screw you over in a heartbeat. 

Rutgers, the worst team in the Big Ten, managed to get by Ohio State today, causing my Big Ten bracket to be shot. In the Big East, Georgetown fell to St John's, ruining my hopes of perfection there. So as it stands I'm currently looking at 1-3 IHOP gift cards, which again is no consolation prize. I'm still perfect in the Pac 12, SEC and Big 12, and usually the first day is the hardest to get through as those feature the teams that no college basketball fan really pays attention to. 

The fact of matter is that even the seemingly easiest brackets still manage to kick your butt. I thought that this would be a cakewalk, but I have been truly mistaken. These things are tough, and it goes to show that picking a March Madness bracket is a total crapshoot. I spend most of my free time watching college basketball, yet I haven't won a bracket pool since 2011. 

This shows that we are in it for the long haul because if these tournaments are impossible to get straight, the actual bracket next week will be, as always, impossible to predict.