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It frustrates us. It energizes us. For some, it enriches us.
Many of us devote so much time to our March Madness brackets every year, but how many of us actually consider where it all started?
Inverse recently probed that question and came up with two names: Jody's Club Forest bar on Staten Island and U.S. Postal Service delivery analyst Bob Stinson.
They each seem to have significantly contributed to the science of bracketology, as we know it today.
First up was Jody's, a bar founded by Jody Haggerty. The pool there is said to have started in 1977. It grew into one of the largest pools in the U.S. — with about 160,000 entries and around $1.5 million in payouts in 2006.
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Terence Haggerty, Jody's son, told Inverse that his dad's pool was just "a neighborhood thing." But the IRS seemed to think differently, and shut the fun down in 2006.
The first pool cost $10 to enter; there were 88 people who filled out a bracket. The winner took home $880.
Terence Haggerty told Inverse that the pot grew so big that his father had to recruit security guards to keep the cash safe.
"I wouldn't say he was the one who created the bracket, but he definitely helped make it what it is today," Terence Haggerty told Inverse.
Around the same time, Stinson was honing his office pool in Louisville, Kentucky.
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Stinson told his story to Louisville Courier-Journal sports journalist Bob Hill in 1997.
Hill had received a letter from Stinson. "He said he'd like to talk about the fact that he invented the pool," Hill told Inverse.
Stinson revealed how he hoped to make the pool better. Before the "pool" concept arrived on the scene, bettors would just pick an overall winner, which didn't allow for much drama. Plus, it didn't allow a knowledgeable college basketball fan from making use of what he or she knew.
But Hill said Stinson talked about how he conceived of a "larger playoff" that "would not limit entrants, and would sustain entrants until the last foul."
There's not much to back up Stinson's claim other than hearsay. But, Hill says, "It was a good tale. Nobody could refute it. And to this day, as far as I know, nobody has — I don't know how you would. Innocent until proven guilty, I guess."
