The Tilley Bracket

If President Obama can make a show of putting together his brackets for the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, then so football jersey can New Yorker writers and editors. Unlike him, we can do so without making jokes about swing states (picking Ohio State over Georgia Tech: “I’m not biased. I’m not trying to win electoral votes in Ohio”) or the legislative process (Kansas State coach Frank Martin: “I could send him up to Congress to get them to vote for health care”). He filled in his bracket for ESPN, which in this respect, as it sometimes does, plays the same role for the Obama Administration as Fox News did for the previous one. When it came to Kansas, ESPN pointed out that Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of soccer uniforms Health and Human Services, was the former governor of the state. Sebelius, Obama said, was “a maniac when it comes to the Jayhawks,” and he was picking Kansas because “I want her to be happy when she’s working on this important issue”—health-care reform, that is, not filling out her brackets.

But enough about politicians. It’s time to bring the spirit of Eustace Tilley into the tournament (holding both a basketball and a monocle is easier than it looks). This year, David Remnick, The New Yorker’s editor, has filled out his bracket. (See below.) So has Steve Coll, who explains some of his statistical methodology over at Think Tank, and Jon Michaud, who may or may not run any betting pool that The New Yorker may or may not have, and who defends his picks at Back Issues. There’s also staff writers Lauren Collins, Nick Paumgarten, Ben McGrath, and James Surowiecki (who has more at The Balance Sheet); Goings On soccer jerseys About Town editor Ben Greenman (who has more at the Goings On blog); and public-relations director Alexa Cassanos. My bracket is in there, too.