The Glimm was still in its infancy in 1993 (not even named the Glimm yet), when an unexpected March blizzard dumped more than a foot of snow on the New York area. Classes at Horace Greeley High School were canceled for several days — making it difficult to collect brackets from other students. On that Thursday morning, with games about to begin, I called classmates so they could dictate their picks, and the pool survived mother nature.
This year, mother nature poses no such threats. Yes, there’s a big March snowstorm, but thanks to modern technology, you can submit your Glimm brackets from the comfort of your warm home. So stop wasting time: Take advantage of this snow day by filling out your bracket.
More details on The Glimm:
WHAT: The 26th Annual Glimm Memorial NCAA Basketball Tournament
HOW: Fill out a bracket, then either give me $5 cash, or send me the money via your bank’s online payment system or venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum)
HOW MUCH: Five bucks per entry. And yes, you can enter more than once (but no more than five times, thanks to the Nevin Barich rule).
THE PAYOUT: The winner gets 70% of the pot, runner-up 20% and third-place person 10%. To give some context, last year’s winner Kate Lord took home about $680. There are a few other prizes, too: The Orlov (whoever finishes exactly middle of the pack gets their $5 back, in cash, via snail mail), the Glimm Scholarship (the highest-finishing relative of Mrs. Glimm from the previous year gets a free entry), and the Pity Finisher (the last-place finisher gets his/her $5 back). On top of that, thirty bucks is coming out of the pot to pay for Glimm infrastructure, and I give myself 2 free entries.
SCORING: It’s a 1-2-4-8-12-16 scoring system with upset points. So that means that you get one point for picking a game correctly in the first round, two points in the second round, etc. And we use upset points – any time a lower-seeded team beats a higher-seeded team, you get half the difference between the seeds as bonus points (Note: This is a tweak from many previous years, when you got the full difference between seeds, not half). So if a 15 beats a 2, you get 6.5 bonus points. If a 9 beats an 8, you get half a point. The bottom line: It pays to take risks.
HOW TO PAY: You have 2 options: Give me cash in person, or send $5 via your bank’s online payment system or Venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum).