March Madness has commenced and billions of dollars will be bet on a group of “student-athletes”, who are predominantly between the ages of 18 and 23, and we will fixate on these young men with a fever and a hunger that can only be matched in intensity by elderly men and women looking to make a score at the local parish’s Bingo Night.

Bingo ain’t for pussies, and I’m not frontin’ when I say those Bingo ladies wield a Sharpie like it’s a MCI Cedar Junction shiv.

But the real gangster is the guy sitting next to you at the bar. Frankly, watching the NCAA Tournament at home is as much fun as deciding to make St. Patrick’s Day a family event. Observing the indescribable mess of St. Patrick’s Day drunks is the true essence of St. Patrick’s Day, and let’s not allow some Family Research Council wannabes to ruin the day by taking away from anyone a reckless amount of Jameson or Guinness. So, go to a bar and watch the Tourney. Give up your remote for the day, walk away from your flat screen, and take a walk on the wild side to a suburban watering hole that attempts to ineptly impersonate an urban drinking oasis.

That guy sitting next to you at the bar with a Bud Light, a cell phone situated perfectly atop his tabloid newspaper and bearing no outward sign of allegiance to any March Madness school is the guy you want to sit near. That is a straight-up old school bettor, who will stay all night long for the action and could give a shit what your office pool bracket looks like. Let me emphasize the newspaper has to be a tabloid paper; such as the New York Daily News, the New York Post or the Boston Herald, because old school G’s like to read the initial betting line from these august newspapers.

The phone is probably not a smart phone. It’s old school. It could even be a flip phone, and this guy uses his phone to connect with his illegal bookie and not some online presence in the Cayman Islands. His phone is used to facilitate a bet – not to Tweet or Facebook. His bet is placed with a person, who he will banter with about the day’s action, and not a Caribbean offshore LLC. Our Old School G prefers the one-to-one interaction with a live customer service agent and not the online anonymity of an electronic transaction.

Old School G

Sit near this guy. Don’t sit next to the three guys wearing poorly fitting Dockers and ordering drafts of Blue Moon, who have their office pool brackets splayed before them on the bar, and are conversing about the chances of a #12 seed beating a #5 seed in this year’s seemingly chalk heavy tourney.

Hone in on the guy who is sweating out the finish of #16 seed Lafayette versus #1 seed Villanova. Villanova is favored by 22.5 points, but the Leopards of Lafayette aren’t going to be intimidated by Jay Wright’s Main Line squad. Try to decipher where he placed his money. His face will be inscrutable, a sphinx-like presence at the bar, and only slight facial tics may provide an indication on what team will either add to or reduce his pile of tourney betting cash.

Watch the way our Old School G orders his drinks. He’ll know the bartender. He will know other patrons sitting around him, who will each possess an intimate and arcane knowledge of past point spreads for NCAA Tournament games. The Old School G will work a less than glamorous job – perhaps a cook at a nursing home – but his obsession with where the spread is moving will be complete.

This is the real tournament within the tournament. Hardcore bettors mock your office pool. There is too much luck and not enough skill in that particular endeavor. And when Gloria from Accounts Payable wins your office pool, because her grandson helped her with her picks; and he just happens to be studying Quantum Physics at M.I.T., where his fraternity has built an NCAA Tournament simulator to increase their odds of winning random office pools, our Old School G will laugh at that often repeated tale of a basketball ingenue capturing the cash.

So, go to the bar. You know, the one where they don’t have kiddie meals and they don’t serve Cupcake chardonnay and enjoy the tournament.