January brings in the New Year, February has Valentine’s Day, but for Jordan Singer, senior, the third month of the year is a thirty day holiday: March Madness. For the final year of watching the NCAA Tournament from a highschooler’s perspective, Singer decided to corral over seventy fellow Mustangs and create bracket pool.

Singer said he charged a five dollar entry fee for each person to generate a winner-take-all pot of over $375.

“It’s a lot of money,” Singer said. “I just kept getting entries – five dollars here and there – and pretty soon it added up.”

Singer said he decided not to split the winnings among multiple participants in order to keep the prize sizeable. Spreading the money among the top competitors would just dilute the pot, Singer said.

Singer said the idea behind the pool started off small but ended up much larger than he expected.

“I grew up in a family that loved March Madness and I just wanted to help get some of my friends more involved,” Singer said. “People started to hear about the pool and I wasn’t going to tell them they couldn’t join. The more the merrier.”

Sean Abernathy, senior, said he joined the pool early on and began plotting his bracket. After a series of upsets, including Mizzou’s first round loss to underdog Norfolk State, Abernathy said his bracket has no chance of winning.

“I watched ESPN and looked up team’s statistics on websites – I did everything to craft the perfect bracket,” Abernathy said. “After the first day I was absolutely screwed, two of my Final Four teams [Mizzou and Duke] were already knocked out.”

Abernathy said he still watches the tournament avidly despite his bracket’s failure. The excitement of NCAA basketball means more than just a bracket, Abernathy said.

“Nobody could have predicted some of the losses this year,” Abernathy said. “It’s like that every year. Every year there’s going to be upsets, you just have to enjoy the game and not take it too seriously.”