Brigit McDannell ’18
Sports Editor
The 2015 NCAA men’s basketball tournament, more commonly known as “March Madness,” began two weeks ago, and many fans have taken the tournament into their own hands. By making their own predictions, fans often get overzealous. One enthusiastic fan went to a whole new level when he incorrectly predicted the University of Utah vs. Georgetown University game, completely offsetting the rest of his bracket.
Thad Jones, a sports management major at UMass Amherst and a proud member and pledge master of Alpha Epsilon Phi Fraternity, said his predictions were “on fleek” and that “nothing would stop his bracket from going to the top, baby.”
However, when the Utah Utes played the Georgetown Bulldogs, beating the No. 4 seed, 75 to 64, in Portland, Ore. on March 21, Jones was devastated. Jones, a self-proclaimed “bracket baller,” had bet his fellow “bros” $10,000 — from his father’s trust fund — that Georgetown would succeed in the Big East Tournament. But when Utah beat Georgetown in the Sweet Sixteen round, Jones’s head literally exploded in shock.
He was immediately rushed to a nearby hospital, where surgeons tried to mend his broken head. After eight hours of surgery and careful reattachment, doctors managed to recover the majority of Jones’s brain and skull. Jones is currently recovering, but his spokesperson said that he “will never gamble in future March Madness tournaments and hopes incidents of this nature never happen again.”
As for the cleanup, Jones’s fellow “bros” pitched in and managed to clear most of the brains from the walls, some embittered as they scraped. Fellow fraternity brother Brandon von Haussen said wiping brains off the floor was “wicked nasty.” Pledge master of Alpha Epsilon, Channing Channings, worried the incident will impact future pledges: “Thad is such a freakin’ idiot. He just doesn’t understand how his actions compromise the rep of the house. He didn’t have be a d*** about it.” Channings went on to say, “This is the eighth consecutive year that Georgetown has been eliminated in the Big East or NCAA Tournament by a lower seed, so why, just why? Also the dude owes me, like, so much money.”
