U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the crisi in Japan at a White House news conference on March 17, 2011.
If your NCAA tournament bracket was a dismal failure; a quaint historical artifact up there with wooden hockey sticks and leather basketballs -- something that was once valued but has since been run over by time, well, you're not alone.
Far from it.
Barack Obama? First hoops fan?
HIs bracket has gone about as well as the US deficit fight; of course he made the mistake of picking all the good teams; going with four No.1 seeds for his Final Four.
But the reality is of all the years you could find a shoulder to cry on about your bracket-gone-poof, this is the year.
At ESPN.com they run an NCAA Tournament 'challenge" that attracted 5.9-million entrants. If there's any better measure of exactly how long the odds were of having both VCU an 11th seed and Butler a No.8 seed in the Final Four, accompanied by a No.4 seed ( Kentucky) and a No.3 ( UConn) I'm not sure what it might be.
Think this year's version of the Final Four is a longshot?
More than 5.9 million brackets were filled out for ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge, but exactly two went 4-for-4 in picking Final Four teams.
Only 1,093 brackets had three of the Final Four correct, while 2.1 percent had two right. A total of 27.6 percent had one Final Four team, while the vast majority of you -- 70.3 percent -- don't have a single team left.
The improbable VCU-Butler matchup definitely busted the most brackets, as just 192 brackets correctly predicted VCU and Butler to meet in the national semifinals. Overall, 36,732 (0.6 percent) had Butler in the Final Four, while just 5,791 (0.1 percent) picked VCU to go this far. Of the 192 brackets picking VCU and Butler in the Final Four, 112 picked Butler to win.
As for the other half of the bracket, 112,489 brackets (1.9 percent) had Connecticut and Kentucky meeting in the Final Four. Overall, 23.1 percent of brackets had UConn making it this far, compared with 8 percent for Kentucky. Of the brackets with the Huskies and Wildcats, 53.5 percent have Connecticut winning.
The bracket was so out of whack this year that even people who would normally be basking in the glow of making some bold underdog pick to get to the Final Four is toast. As one fellow noted to me on Twitter: I thought it was impressive that I could have had 3/4 FF teams including Butler. Then Kansas and UNC lost.
Perhaps the most amazing thing? Of the two people who picked the Final Four correctly, one of them is in first place in the game; the other is in 6,343th place, having made a bunch of booboos (likely high rational picks, in other words) elsewhere.
And the guy leading? He's not home yet, as he picked VCU to win the whole tournament which, most people even now would say, seems like a long-shot.
But what do they know.