Obama: 3 NCAA wins for ISU, 0 for Iowa, UNI

First and foremost, please don't respond to this with political diatribes. I don't do politics here. People have a hard enough time being civil about sports.

OK, it's low-hanging fruit for me to do a blog post about President Obama's NCAA tournament picks. The Prez is going to make a lot of fans mad no matter who he picks, so it's easy for me to say 'Hey, look, Obama picked Iowa to lose to Davidson Friday.”

The fact is, a lot of people are picking Davidson. However, the president not only has them beating Iowa, but turning around Sunday and doing the same thing to second-seed Gonzaga.

He doesn't go out on many limbs when filling out his brackets (three No. 1 seeds and a No. 2 in the Final Four), but the Davidson pick definitely goes against the flow. Gonzaga is a very popular pick to win twice in Seattle. If it does so, it would meet Iowa State in the Sweet 16 if the Cyclones do what the president predicts and wins twice in Louisville this week.

And then, Obama says, ISU beats the Zags and goes on to play Duke in the South Region final, where the Blue Devils prevail.

By the way, the president was right about Iowa State beating Connecticut and losing to Kentucky in 2012, was wrong when he had Notre Dame defeating the Cyclones in 2013, and was incorrect when he had North Carolina eliminating ISU on the first weekend last year.

As for Northern Iowa, Obama first picked Wyoming over the Panthers Friday, then crossed out Wyoming and went with UNI, then changed his mind again and took the Cowboys. (See attached photo at the top of the page)

If he is right about the Hawkeyes and Panthers losing, all of us in the Iowa sports media who are traveling to Seattle for the Iowa and UNI games will have a short stay. I'm flying there from Cedar Rapids via Dallas. It's not the shortest path.

A friend told me at least I can rack up frequent flier miles. That provided no consolation whatsoever.

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