She’s already received seven Facebook.com marriage requests, and more may be on the way for Kiley Weidman, a Western Michigan University student in a three-way tie for the $25,000 first-place prize in the 2007 Facebook NCAA Basketball Global Bracket Challenge.
Weidman, a physical education and elementary education senior, said she entered the challenge when a friend invited her to join a pool. She made her picks by listening to friends and looking at each team’s conference and record.
“I don’t follow college basketball closely, but I watch it on and off throughout the season,” Weidman said. “So I pulled everything I knew together and made my best guesstimate.”
It is a “guesstimate” that could bring a big pay day if Weidman’s Final Four picks are accurate. Weidman chose the University of Florida as the National Champion and predicted the universities of Memphis and North Carolina as the other teams in the Final Four.
“I am kind of nervous, but I’m not losing sleep over it,” Weidman said. “The amount of friend requests and messages and pokes and comments I have gotten in 10 hours is unbelievable and hilarious.”
Weidman also has ties with high school sophomore Forrest Cohrs and college dropout David James. The three Facebookers average more than 93 percent in accuracy and are leading more than a million participants.
Cohrs, who attends Circle High School in Towanda, Kan., said he filled out his bracket because he was bored.
“Honestly I just kinda listened to who was doing really good at the time and picked them to win,” Cohrs said. “It’s definitely all luck that it happened because I didn’t hardly watch any college basketball.”
Cohrs picked the fifth-seeded University of Southern California as the overall winner. Cohrs said he is not nervous because he “seriously doubts” he will win.
James, a Guelph, Ontario, resident who picked the University of Pittsburgh as the tournament winner, described his basketball knowledge as “flawless.”
“I watched Sportscenter for like five minutes and then picked teams I liked and teams I wanted to lose,” James said. “I’m a dropout who plans on making it big in the sports betting world.”
James said he’s already happy with the Facebook sweatshirt he earned for his second-round top 20 finish.
“Sure it would be sick to have $25,000 as a liquid asset, but I’m happy with the hoodie I won,” James said. “I just hope it’s a small and not a large. I want to be able to wear it.”
Marketing 2006 graduate Will Peacock leads the LSU Facebook network. Peacock is ranked No. 33 overall and picked Florida as the National Champion.
“I didn’t have much of a strategy for picking the teams,” Peacock said. “I might as well have posted the brackets on a dartboard and threw darts at it blindfolded.”
Peacock said his seemingly lucky success has caused some tension among friends.
“A lot of them study each pick intently and take hours to fill out their bracket,” he said. “I filled mine out in under 5 minutes.”
Peacock said if he wins, the $25,000 prize will go toward supporting LSU athletics.
“I would use it as a down payment for tickets to the LSU vs. Alabama [football] game,” he said.
—–Contact Amy Brittain at [email protected]