Presenting: Buzzer's inevitably disastrous 2025 NCAA Tournament bracket

And related thoughts thereon. Plus: Join the Buzzer bracket pool!

This is going to go super well

Ah, a freshly completed bracket. Isn’t it lovely? So full of hope and promise. Nothing is wrong with it yet! Even the UNC pick, made before Tuesday night’s demolition of San Diego State (which totally VINDICATED the Tar Heels against all of the vile HATERS and LOSERS who said they didn’t deserve to be in our beautiful NCAA Tournament, because that’s how this stuff works, obviously) still looks good. Perfection.

Enjoy this feeling while it lasts, folks, because this document, and likely yours, will be an absolute mess at about 4 p.m. ET Thursday. This is how it always goes. This is part of the fun.

Before we give a few of the underlying reasons we decided to pick such a bad bracket, first things first: The 2025 Buzzer Bracket pool! Anyone reading this is invited to join our community contest over on ESPN, which was a resounding success last year:

Group Link: Buzzer Bracket Thunderdome
Password: buzzer2025

Free readers are invited to play! The winner will receive a yearly subscription comped. If the eventual winner is already an annual subscriber, they will get upgraded to the Founding Members tier, which gives them access to our semi-monthly members calls where we hang out and talk basketball off the cuff. (It’s like a podcast you get to be a part of … that is never released to the public. Isn’t that the dream?) If the winner is found not on our email subscribers list come April 8 we will ignore you and award the prize to the next highest place finisher. We run a tight ship around here. (Just kidding. It’ll be fine. But seriously: subscribe.)

Anyway, yeah: Join the bracket pool. And if you want to win, do the exact opposite of what you see in the image above, the underlying reasons for which we will now outline in some detail: