busted.

Last Thursday morning, I'm staring at an empty bracket, trying to decide who is favored to win in a contest between two college basketball teams which I know nothing about. Hmm, Wichita State Shockers? What kind of a mascot is that? Nah, they're never gonna win anything.

My bracket completed, I was all ready to hand it in along with my $5 to the guy who runs our office pool. I feel no remorse for the fact that I just used up fifteen minutes of company time to fill out a bracket, since this pool is obviously company-approved. They did hand out the blank brackets during a company-wide meeting and encourage everyone to participate. But before I hand in what is sure to be another losing prediction, I decide to print out another bracket so that I can make a copy of my prediction. Last year, I forgot to do this, and so I had no idea how well or badly I was doing in the pool. Okay, I knew that I was doing badly, but I like to know just how badly.

I turn to Google and type in the words "NCAA bracket." The first link that pops up is for CBS SportsLine. I click it, and am directed to my company's web page. Huh. That's weird. I hit the Back button to return to the Google results, and try hitting the CBS link again. Once again, I find myself staring at the same logo that graces the building where I now sit. This cannot be a coincidence. Suddenly, I realize: busted.

Feeling a little guilty about using company time to play games, since I've obviously now been caught at it, I go back and hit the second link that Google gave me. This time, I am able to print out a clean bracket without a glaring reminder of who paid for the 15 minutes I just spent. On my way back from the printer, I stop to talk to the web site guy. I might as well confess, now that my hands are bright red anyway.

What I didn't know was this: CBS SportsLine is streaming the games of the first three rounds live this year over their website. Our network guy, hearing of this, decided to block that site so we weren't all sitting at our desks, using up the company's bandwidth. It was only a lucky chance that Google returned the same site as the first choice for a bracket search. The network guy didn't figure that anyone would even run into the blocked site.

I was the first person to discover the block, but since all this happened to me before any games even started, my bracket story was believed, and I was declared innocent of trying to watch the games on the clock. Later that afternoon, however, Roger was not so lucky.