There are a few traditions in our house that reliably signal the season, and one of my favorites is the first weekend of March Madness. Every year the whole family fills out our NCAA tournament brackets like we have been studying college basketball all season long. We have not. Not even close.
Every year, with great confidence and very little actual information, we gather around the table, debate mascots, colors, and the occasional fun fact someone half-remembers, and lock in our picks. It is equal parts strategy and complete guesswork. My kids take it very seriously. I take it seriously too, at least for about ten minutes, until I remember that I could not tell you a single team's record from December.
But there is one constant, at least for me and the kids: Gonzaga.
That is where I went to law school, back when Gonzaga still carried that "Cinderella" energy, scrappy, underestimated, the team you rooted for because they weren't supposed to win. Fast forward a couple of decades, and now they are expected to do well. A low seed. A favorite.
And this year? A number 3 seed. A strong season. A lot of promise. Out in the second round.
The instinct to explain away a loss
Cue the collective disappointment. There is always that moment after your team loses where the instinct kicks in: they just weren't that good, or they didn't do what they should have done. It is a reflex, really. We want the result to make sense. We want to believe outcomes are neat and deserved and predictable.
But they aren't.
If you actually watch the game, and not just the final score, you can see something else entirely. You can see preparation. Execution. Effort. You can see a team that, on another day, with a few different bounces, could have had a completely different outcome. Sometimes the shots just don't fall.
Sometimes the shots just don't fall. And that is the part that always gets me, not just as a fan, but as a lawyer.
What the courtroom and the bracket have in common
Because the same thing happens in the courtroom. You can prepare the case. Know the record inside and out. Anticipate the arguments. Do everything right. And still walk out without the result you were working toward.
Not because you were unprepared. Not because your position lacked merit. But because outcomes are influenced by variables you cannot fully control: how a witness comes across, how a jury interprets the facts, how a judge views the law.
Sometimes the other side wins, and it does not mean they were better prepared. Sometimes you lose, and it does not mean you did something wrong.
That is a hard lesson. It is an even harder one to explain to kids who are staring at a busted bracket and wondering how their "guaranteed" Final Four pick is already out. But it is also an important one.
The only part you truly own
While you cannot guarantee outcomes in basketball, in litigation, or in life, you can guarantee your preparation. You can show up ready. You can put in the work. You can make the best decisions you can with the information you have. And then, you let the game play out.
That is what I want my kids to take away from these weekends. Not just the fun of cheering for a team, and not just the disappointment of a loss. But the understanding that effort and outcome are not always perfectly aligned.
You do your homework. You practice. You prepare your case. You show up. And sometimes, even then, the ball just does not drop. But that does not make the effort any less valuable. It does not make the preparation any less meaningful. In fact, it is the only part you truly own.
So we will keep filling out our brackets every March. We will keep rooting for Gonzaga, whether they are the underdog or the favorite. We will celebrate the wins and groan at the losses. And we will keep reminding ourselves, at the kitchen table and in the courtroom, that while we cannot control the outcome, we can control how ready we show up.
