NCAA Sees Fit To Feature An Eight-Year-Old’s March Madness Bracket

What in the actual f***, NCAA?

I am speechless.

But not wordless.

Here we go.

On the one hand, you have the NCAA, which for decades fought as hard as humanly possible against the idea of legalized sports betting. Now that it’s legal, the NCAA brass is still fighting against it. Charlie Baker, the NCAA president, believes prop betting on college athletes should be banned, for instance. 

They also don’t let athletes bet. At all. Heck, they don’t let anyone associated with NCAA bet on sports, period, full stop.

Of course, this hasn’t prevented them from going all-in when it comes to March Madness, specifically the brackets. They run their own pools, in fact. (Not for money, but still.)

And — obviously — the NCAA is concerned about underage gambling. They’re done their own surveys on the topic.

On the other hand … there is this.

What you are looking at is a tweet from the NCAA’s official March Madness X-formerly-Twitter feed. It features The Rizzler.

The Rizzler, for those unaware, is a social media star from New Jersey. His name is Christian Joseph, and he’s most famous for his “Rizz face,” which according to the Internet (and confirmed by my 15-year-old son) consists of him squinting his eyes, scratching his chin, and raising an eyebrow. He has 1.5 million followers on TikTok. (Hey, we don’t make the rules.)

Oh, and also this: He’s eight years old.

Eight years old

As in, he was born in 2016. As in, he was born in the first Trump administration. As in, he can’t vote until 2038. As in, he’s EIGHT FREAKING YEARS OLD.

And the NCAA, that bastion of high-mindedness, is featuring him and his bracket on their official Twitter feed?

I don’t know about you, but any bracket I’ve ever joined came with me handing over money in hopes of winning even more money. You know — gambling.

Betting on brackets is a thing, you do know that, right NCAA?

And it’s such a hot button issue that it got Taylor Mathis — the walking bets woman — fired from her job at SuperBook a few years back when she brought a bracket into her sister’s second grade classroom for a math lesson.

If SuperBook thinks showing kids a bracket is bad form, what’s the NCAA doing with my man The Rizzler? (I’d like to meet him, if I’m being fully honest.)

Yes, it’s possible to fill out a bracket and pick winners and let it have nothing to do with gambling … but when was the last time you invited all your friends to enter a bracket pool with no reward for the winner?

Anyway, listen: Are there bigger fish to fry than going after the NCAA hyping bracketology by highlighting an 8-year-old? Um … maybe there’s not? I mean, this is a bad look. It really is. 

Either way, this is just something to remember the next time the NCAA gets all high and mighty when it comes to sports betting of any stripe.