Jackson Free Press

In the middle of the most exciting March Madness in recent memory, you tipped over your Abita Turbodog and nacho cheese. Your NCAA bracket, patiently researched and completed, is now covered in a gooey coat of Rotel dip. You lovingly scrape away the damage to find … devastation.

Kansas to win it all? Villanova to get past the first weekend? Good Ali Farokhmanesh, Batman!

Right about now you wish you had left the bracket beneath that cheese varnish where you couldn't see it, right? That account manager in your office who picked Butler and Michigan State "because I drove a Ford in college" is looking like the sports-world's Nostradamus, isn't he?

I would be lying if I told you I hadn't heard stories like yours before. "The Great Sports Fan Brought Low" is one of the most clichéd and common themes in all of sports writing (see Bartman, Steve; Lakers fan Jack Nicholson in "Wolf").

Allow me to offer some advice.

I've chosen some quotes from Yogi Berra, the great Major League catcher who had more home runs than strikeouts five times in a season. Like Berra, you should take the long view: There will be more hits than strikeouts in your picking career.

I hope.

Put it into perspective
"Slump? I ain't in no slump... I just ain't hitting." -Yogi Berra

Look on the bright side: You didn't unveil your bracket to national coverage in the White House Map Room.

Barack Obama's bracket has been devastated since the first weekend. He predicted that the Kansas Jayhawks would win it all, and ranked Villanova as a Final Four team. After the first weekend, His bracket dropped to 106,679 in ESPN's rankings.

Of course, Obama will find it a lot easier to put a positive spin on the last two weeks. The president also took some time to watch a health-care bill pass in a U.S. House of Representatives vote. It's been a seemingly unreachable ambition of numerous presidents, Republican and Democrat, since the Roosevelt administration. (That would be Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1908.)

Become nostalgic
"Ninety percent of this game is half mental." -Yogi Berra

Think back over all your past achievements. Remember the game-winning shot in a pickup game in the seventh grade, or that improbable touchdown pass you threw in Madden.

No one can take away the year you picked 12 of the last 16, and that was after Duke broke your heart by losing on a buzzer-beater. When colleagues spoke about your picks, it was in hushed tones, as if they were witnessing firsthand the Aurora Borealis.

Now, your bracket has the stench of a loser, and you've become the Augur Winless.

Then again, you can always learn something from this year's shortcomings.

There's Always Next Year
"The future ain't what it used to be." -Yogi Berra

You have more than 345 days until you get to pick your bracket again. You will experience some triumphs and defeats. You will achieve some life milestones, like 1,000 days worked or 500 checks cashed in. In the meantime, it's important that you keep your focus on what matters: next year's bracket.

Do some soul-searching. Why favor the "chalk" so much? There seems to some favoritism given to Big East schools on your bracket. Gauge how teams began the year (Northern Iowa was ranked 28th overall in some polls) and how they ended it (Villanova's slump), but don't fall into traps where you entirely disregard the potential represented by the former or the impermanence of the latter.

Start researching early. Rarely are you going to think, while filling out your bracket, "I wish I knew less about the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh."