I seem to be in a bit of funk these days (tariffs will do that to you), but fortunately I find myself saved by one of my moistest favourite annual rites of Crude Observational status. The ubiquitous sports metaphor and life story. The one time of year when I actually will have multiple televisions on in the office (yes, we have multiple televisions, the question is, why don’t you?). I am referring of course to the annual NCAA Final Four Basketball tournament. Otherwise known as March Madness (even though it ends in April) and the Tournament of 64 (even though there are 68 teams). But I digress.
March Madness.
How I have missed you. It is hard to believe it has been a full year since I have been able to sit down and listen to the sweet and somewhat jarring sound of squeaky shoes on a gym floor as my favourite sporting event unfolds in front of me on office TVs, secretive channel switching at home and late-night PVR’d buzzer beaters. I know we are already one day in and all the brackets are busted, even mine, but this tournament is always pretty exciting with many Cinderella stories – what’s a McNeese anyway and how did they beat Clemson? Why is the SEC dropping like flies?.
This is also the third year in about 87 that we don’t have to/get to see one of the game’s great coaches, Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) as he retired two years ago. But the Dookies have risen from the crypt and they are super relevant today with their freshman wonder Cooper Flagg (real name) a trancendant player who have been compared to a young … Larry Bird? Seriously? Come on guys. Calm down.
As I wrote last year and the year before and the year before that, I am a huge Duke fan as they were formative to my basketball indoctrination. I am also an old school tournament fan – those 1990’s rivalries were epic and nothing personified them more than Christian Laetner and Duke. And Kentucky. Who will hopefully get eliminated – by Troy!
Interestingly, I watched the infamous Laettner/Kentucky game at a bar called Marcos & Pepe’s in Montreal with a guy named Guy. We were sitting in the back corner of the bar watching a TV that couldn’t have been bigger than 24 inches – one of the most seminal sports highlights of all time playing out in a smoke-filled Montreal bar with him and me drinking two for one Buds and platters of tacos. The best.
And now we are back at it, with Duke favoured to reach the final and classic coaching names like John Calipari and Rick Pitino set for a potential clash as their respective Arkansas and St John’s teams get ready to throw down in a classic 40 minutes of Hell v The Sweater rematch. Guys – IYKYK. If you don’t, can’t help you.
At any rate, the NCAA tournament is back and after one day (I don’t count the play-ins, sorry) I can already say it’s been great, not only because I love the tourney, but because it’s a respite from the chaos and noise that surrounds us. And, true to form, here I sit on a sofa, typing and watching, watching any hope of winning wither and die as my bracket implodes thanks to, of all teams, McNeese! Good lord. At least now I can unabashedly cheer for … Creighton?
And, lucky for you, the Big Dance as it’s called is also in the energy world and, as tradition dictates, I need to do my picks for that as well.
Last year was a pretty intense energy tournament and my final match up was a doozy, featuring OPEC against Permian Merger Mania and an epic OPEC win. As always.
In the interests of fairness, in order to properly assess my predictive chops for the energy showdown, it is worthwhile to also take a look at my actual “basketball” picks from the last time I did this with actual basketball.
My 2024 Final 4 – Iowa State – New Mexico; Marquette – Creighton. Creighton crushes the Hawkeyes. As we all know, those picks were trash and UConn won, again. Against Purdue. After beating Alabama and North Carolina State. Whoops!
So yeah, Gambler’s advice? Take my predictions with a grain of salt – please. And only rely on me for the early round wipe outs.
The Energy Bracket
As always, this year’s players in the energy bracket are a little different than last year.
The early rounds saw some interesting matches and upsets. Much of Canada as we know is officially out or relegated to the junior tournament, but familiar names such as OPEC and Russia remain and Permania – now coached by the disgraced Rick Pitino’s second cousin Louie and remaned as “Drill Babay Drill” is still hanging around thinking they are the best thing going.
New entrants crashed the tourney from some of the mid-major tournaments and the at-large bids, so they don’t fit the energy basket specifically, but they are a big influence. Happily, the Coronavirus team didn’t make the tournament but an at-large bid went to the Cryptobros who went on a late season run for the ages, coached by the ghost of Jerry Tarkanian. Also new this year are the Tariff Trade Wars, who thrashed the Biden Malarkeys in a play-in tournament and a new team called the Canadian Prime Ministers!
Everyone is in tough again this year against a team that hasn’t had this long a ride of dominance since the 1970’s – that’s right, Inflation is back baby and they mean business. So, without further ado, the major themes face off against each other in an epic battle for global relevance.
Sweet Sixteen
In the first game, perennial favourite and number one seed OPEC faced off against the United Nations based The Environment team which barely qualified as the Number 16 seed. While as always there was considerable hype before the game – mainly from the media – about how the environment was the be all and end-all of the world, they were clearly no match for the scale, execution and killer instinct of the Saudi-dominated OPEC team. While The Environment recruited some high end stars who had some basketball cred like an out of shape Leo DiCaprio, the outcome of the game was never in doubt.
In a seeding that was in essence a sign of transitioning times, the surprise number 2 seed, Capex, found itself matched up against the latest Johnny Come Lately, Tariff Trade Wars. Capex is a young team, with lots of freshman players that fluked their way into a second seed due to an “accounting error”, but in all reality they are still a few years away from hitting their stride. The TTW team on the other hand learned some valuable lessons about unpredictability in the play-in tournament and completely flummoxed the capex team by putting players in and out, shooting from all over the floor and at one point simply walking out of the stadium before coming back and booping the Capex team’s coach in the nose. No one really knew what was going to happen because it was all so random and stupid. Ultimately, in a sign of things to come. Capex’s soul was crushed and the game ended. Tariffs won, but you know what they say. No one really won.
Inflation, the feared number 3 seed, found itself matched against Alternative Energy, a team that strangely plays its best games during the day and, to the disappointment of the most passionate fan base in all of sports, is prone to simply up and disappear for maddeningly long stretches of time and can often be founds in a field fanning themselves. In a throwback performance that would have made Christian Laettner proud, inflation was all elbows, cheap fouls and dirty play and managed, in one epic first half run, to dismantle whatever confidence the Alternative Energy squad had and ran them out of the stadium in the second half. As the sun set on an epic statement game, it was clear that Inflation was here to stay and not at all transitory. This was not a team prone to blowing in the wind.
In a match featuring two teams from the oil export division, 13th seeded and newly enjoined Canadian Prime Ministers took on a traditional energy power Russia. In what was billed as a classic morality play of a highly ethical yet not very relevant mid-major vs a former conference super-power and league bully, it turned out that Team Russia, while highly ranked, was a bit of a paper bear after all. By halftime, it was obvious that the Canadian PMs, dominated as it was by Elbows Up Johnny Chretien and some surprisingly effective point guard play from Kim Campbell was able to overcome some lacklustre 6th man play from Justin Trudeau to deliver a solid message to Russia that they wouldn’t be bullied. The play of the game without a doubt was when with a minute left, Stephen “the Pearl” Harper hit a back door cutting CHretrien in stride who proceeded to give the bare-chested Captain of the Russia Team, Vlad (don’t call me gravy) Poutine the Shawinigan Handshake on the way to an emphatic throwdown and the winning points of the game. Excited by their relatively easy win, the PMs looked past all the air-balls put up by red-shirt Freshman PM Mark Carney.
Moving to the middle of the bracket, the team rankings get closer and the upset potential that much more probable. In a big surprise, Natural Gas has remained as a highly competitive 11 seed. Matched up against Oil Prices, a team that recruits both in the Natties backyard as well as the oilpatch, it seemed like a resurgent Natural Gas should be able to compete against a team as volatile as Oil Prices, but unfortunately the early promise of their decent winter season for Natural Gas turned into serial disappointment, as is always the case for the spurned bridesmaid fossil fuel. Oil Prices, even if they are off their peak performance from last year and have lost players to both the OPEC and Trump team, made short work of the dispirited Natties, whose transitions were still a bit clumsy, despite their passing being relatively clean. Crushed by their defeat yet again at the hands of whoever shows up, Natural Gas fired their coach and rebranded as “clean coal off-gas stuff”.
10th ranked occasional powerhouse Equity Markets found itself matched against the rebranded Permian team now called Drill Baby Drill at #7. Once an important player in the energy community, the Equity team lost interest in the game at the tip-off, realizing that they had just lucked into the tournament on the strength of seven major players from last year who seem to have lost half their skill in less than a year, name recognition and some love from the selection committee. Drill Baby Drill on the other hand firmly believed they were a team of destiny, even if they had no fans or sponsorship.
In what was expected to be a marquee matchup, the plucky and downtrodden Energy Services team at #12 saw itself matched against number 5 ranked Capital Markets. A doormat for the past few years, Energy Services was buoyed by some of the new technologies it has been using in its training recently and was also helped by a youth movement which has seen it develop a lot of younger and hungrier players eager to make their mark. Unfortunately for energy services, their coach Chris Wright quit the team on the eve of the tournament to take on a role for the Trump team and capital markets was able to play keep-away for the entire game. Energy Services was in fact lucky to even get a shot away that one time when the shot clock expired. Much like Capex, Energy Services was undermanned, over-matched and out of their league. Capital markets toyed with them all night long and left them for dead. Better luck next year Energy Services!
The last matchup of the opening round was YUGE pitting number 8 ranked Trump et al against 9th ranked upstart Interest Rates. While Interest Rates opened high and dominated the game early, the level of cheating happening in the Trump et al camp was on a scale not seen in, well, 3 or 4 years. With the support of a rabid crew of red-hatted lunatic fans buoying them on and a surprise one-man cheering section that looked suspiciously like Elon Musk, the Trump crew managed to confuse the interest team with so much with nonsensical speaking, invented words and hidden opponent game plans that at the end, it wasn’t close.
Elite Eight
A number of intriguing matchups in this round.
In a highly anticipated matchup, quasi Cinderella-story Trump et al went up against OPEC. While the Trump team isn’t really a true upstart, they do employ a frenzied defensive style that keeps every opponent guessing and have no lack of confidence in everything they do. OPEC on the other hand is a perennial powerhouse team that is able to bend how the world derives energy to its whims and, absent members from Western democracies, when it comes up against teams like Trump, well, let’s just say it, they don’t care and they play dirty. The first inkling this wasn’t going to be pretty was when OPEC simply gave the eponymous Trump $2 billion to drop out. Typically this is where you would see Trmp fold, but the unthinkable happened. The Trump team countered by promising OPEC Captain Saudi Arabia nuclear secrets. The trick worked – with key players packed up and heading to Mar-a-Lago to pick up what were actually empty boxes, the Trump used some clutch free throw shooting by JD Vance (2-12) to eke out the surprise upset. The tournament will never be the same. OPEC shamed itself by falling for the oldest trick in the book. A promise from the US.
On the other side of the bracket, we got to see a matchup of Oil Prices, always a major player, going up tournament crasher Inflation. This game of course was a rematch from last year. The Oil Price team was clearly more prepared for this matchup than they have been for Elite 8 matchups in previous years and showed tremendous discipline against a team that draws its strength from across the world, including poaching players from the Oil Price team itself. Oddly, as the Oil Price team got stronger so did the Inflation squad. Overtime was needed to solve this one and, in the end, oil prices couldn’t keep up with inflation and they cratered with a lack of team support.
Speaking of which, that leads us to the most unlikely match of the day. A matchup between tournament upstart – Canadian PMs and one-time perennial power Capital Markets. With a roster comprised of red-blooded Canadians and Elbows-Up Crusty Laurentian Elites, the Canadian team was coasting off its tournament-busting upset of Russia, while Capital Markets, another team with a strong global pedigree had stomped out Energy Services, a team also blessed with many Canadian (primarily Alberta-based) players. The PMs held their own for a while buoyed by a genuine Team Canada spirit that while it seemed entirely contrived was still more than enough to fire up the 50th year senior Johhny on the spot Chretien, but ultimately the whole shtick seemed to run out of energy. The final nail in the coffin for the Canadian team came when newbie Mark “Put that in the Bank” Carney threw up 5 airballs in a row when all he needed to do was run out the clock and then proceeded to tell all the best players on the team that they were on a production cap, although he called it a “shot cap”. With no one able to shoot, the team had no offense and collapsed. Not sure who made that guy coach and captain, but quite the own goal.
The final match featured Tariff Trade War, fresh off a dominant win against overmatched Capex, taking its wily game of percentages and shenanigans toe-to-toe against Drill Baby Drill, who had so recently silenced Equity Markets. Steady and inexorable, with players joining the team from around the globe, the Tariff team was an inexorable force in the face of the high-flying antics of the starting five of the Drill Baby Drill team as no combination of no-look passes, recycled Harlem Globetrotter head-fakes, buckets of confetti and assorted flim-flammery seemed to be able to penetrate the Tariff defences. Desperate to rally in the second half, the Drill crew team decided to pull their starters and go after value players that had been sidelined for years and were cheaper. Unfortunately, towards the end of the game their finance team came and presented them with a bill for all the services they had been using that were suddenly much more expensive than they used to be. Faced with reality, the Drill Baby Drill team fired everyone and declared bankruptcy. The Tariff team didn’t so much win as advanced by default.
Final Four
In the opening match, the surprise OPEC vanquishing Trump team took on the now tournament surprise team Capital Markets, and it quickly became apparent that Trump was an incredibly deep team with many options and strategies available to it against any opponent most of them illegal sure, but winning is verything. The Capital Markets team that had done well to get this far proved no match for the Trump team’s secret weapon that they called DOGE – Dunker of Great Elonity, never mind the comedic stylings of Lutnik the Trump team mascot. Ultimately, Trump swept Capital Markets aside as easily as any team in memory at this late stage and moved to the final to await its opponent. But don’t hang your head Capital Markets, you will always have the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve.
Trump’s opponent was determined in the second match of the day, pitting Inflation against Tariff Trade Wars. In what many are calling and epic throwback match to the 1970’s these two titans of another era matched up for a slugfest for the ages. Tariffs ran a classic triangle offense of ever-increasing shot percentages and non-tariff barriers and brought in subsidized ringers for good measure. Inflation countered the only way it knew how, making tariffs pay dearly for every inch of court and basket, crusing spirits hopes and dreams along the way and creating rampant unemployment. Tariffs saw this carnage and realized it was good and also proposed to inflation that if they banded together – inflation, tariffs, unemployment, trade wars there was no way they could lose. The union was approved and the team renamed Stagflation.
Championship
Trump vs Stagflation. It’s a classic tournament confrontation, one which didn’t need to happen but the one we all deserve for allowing teams to buy their way into the league, rather than properly qualifying. Unprecedented. An upstart 1970s throwback– Stagflation facing off against a plodding, unsophisticated yet effective opponent. Bad strategy faces unforgiving stagnation.
Who would give first?
True to form the Trump squad reached into a bag of tricks to unleash a barrage of classic bait and switch tactics, unpredictable ball movement, three-point bombs and turnover fuelled runs to move out to a healthy lead in the first half, doubling their points every few minutes. But as the second half got under way, the offensive explosion turned out to be an illusion. Every attempt to make basketball great again was undone by the soulless inevitability of Stagflation. Scoring slowed to a standstill then the tide turned against the Trump team. Slowly at first and the with renewed vigour. The first sign something was wrong was when the rats left the locker room during a second half potty break. Then suddenly JD Vance was nowhere to be seen. The fans turned just as decisively.
Inevitability seemed the order of the day when the DOGE secret weapon was seen hoping into a beaten-up cybertruck with a bumper sticker reading “next stop Mars” and peeling out of the parking lot leaving a trail of aluminum strips and scotch tape behind.
Ultimately it was Trump, standing alone in front of the entire Stagflation team – outmatched, out of ideas, unable to even mount a resistance. The final score was recorded as the worst blow-out in tournament history. And give that the Trump team gave the Tariff team their seed capital, can be easily qualified as the biggest self-own in tournament history.
“Why didn’t anyone warn me” Trump was heard to mutter as he made his lonely way to the lockerroom.
So, there you have it – agree or disagree with the outcome but it’s hard to argue that the metaphor didn’t get taken behind the proverbial woodshed and beaten to death.
Oh, and my final four? St John – Michigan State; Duke – UCLA.
St John plays Duke and Duke wins. Lord help me.
What a bizarre set of picks.
