President Barack Obama picked the Kentucky Wildcats to win the NCAA tournament in his bracket revealed Wednesday on ESPN.
The president conceded, “I suspect I will not be the only person to make that pick.”
The basketballer-in-chief forecasts Kentucky, Villanova, Duke, and Arizona—“They don’t get as much attention because they’re out on the West Coast”—in the Final Four. The president sees a Kentucky victory over Villanova in the title game.
Fans of the other tournament hopefuls retain cause for retaining hope. The president has failed to pick the winner in every year of his presidency save the first, when he selected the University of North Carolina Tar Heels to win the tournament.
Ever the legislative tinkerer, the president called for a shorter shot clock, a wider lane, and pushing back the three-point line for college hoops.
Despite picking three of four number-one seeds to advance to the Final Four, Obama maintained that he identified more as a “scrappy” underdog, calling himself a 3rd or 4th seed. No team seeded with a higher number than four makes his Elite Eight and no team seeded higher than twelve makes his Sweet Sixteen.
He likes college basketball’s one percenters to get richer at the expense of the rest of the field.
“I don’t think you can play a perfect basketball game anymore than you can do anything perfectly,” Obama reflected on John Calipari’s undefeated team. “But these guys are coming pretty close.”