If you’re like most sports fans, March is the one time of year where football may not even be on your radar.  We all have those folks that we work with that love to get a bracket pool going.  Heck, maybe you are that person!

And if you’ve ever filled out a bracket, it goes about the same way every year, going into the Sweet 16, you’re lucky if you’ve even come close to having a competitive bracket.  Somehow you always find yourself losing to the person who knows nothing about basketball and makes his or her picks based on how much they like the color of the team’s uniforms.

Well, I don’t know if anyone else saw this story about Matt Hasselbeck’s 5-year-old son Henry and his amazing NCAA bracket picks, but he’s found a similar winning strategy — team mascots.  

All you need to know about Henry’s bracket is in this excerpt from the full story:

Henry Hasselbeck’s bracket entry on ESPN.com’s Tournament Challenge currently ranks 103rd out of 5.9 million entries. His Final Four are still alive, including the Florida Gators, his choice for a national champion.

Among the highlights on Henry Hasselbeck’s bracket:

In the Southwest Region, he chose 12-seed Richmond, 11-seed VCU, 10-seed Florida St., and top-seed Kansas to advance to the Sweet 16. He was one of only 2811 entries to have all four teams advancing.

In the Southeast Region, he chose Butler to upset top-seeded Pittsburgh.

I have to say that I have to agree with his picks for the most part.  By this strategy, I don’t know if the Purdue Boilermakers would ever make it out of the first round.  Maybe if they played Ohio State?  But what I don’t agree with is that he has Florida winning it all.  I have to think that Henry struggled with that pick over the UCSB Gauchos in the first round.

The thing thing that I don’t get, is that if you’re choosing mascots, I have no idea how you pick the Gators over the Blue Devils.  Maybe the color of their devils has something to do with it.  Plus the look of Duke’s logo is kinda lame. Also in his final four are Kansas and Kentucky.  So I have to think that the actual mascot and the look of the logo have to play into it a little bit.  There certainly isn’t anything menacing about a Jayhawk, but I can see how their logo would appeal to a 5-year-old.  

As much as I’d love to knock the strategy, he’s doing better than the rest of us. That is of course if you’re among the top 100 in ESPN’s challenge. Well done, Henry!