April 7, 2026
From Editor Walt Brickman: First of all kudos to the Michigan Wolverines and the U Conn Huskies. Have to acknowledge, however, that their NCAA championship game did not compare to the Bricklyn University’s “BRU Crew” stunning win over Brickover University in the 2024 Inland Sports League finals. Now that was quite a game!
But that’s not the point of the investigative reporting you’ll read about below in an account that raises some interesting, and perhaps troubling, issues.
Bricklyn Eagle investigative reporters have learned that Duane Sandville — avatar for Wayne Senville, who is the Outland liaison to Bricklyn — had a helping hand from Bricklyn University Assistant Basketball Coach Ray Redbricks in completing his winning entry in the 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Family Tournament.
The Eagle has obtained a photo purportedly showing Sandville receiving a copy of Coach Redbricks’ NCAA tourney picks.
When we questioned about this, Sandville replied “who cares what sort of help you get in filling out your brackets,” adding that, “I’d bet more than half of the millions of bracket entries used AI, or relied on other so-called experts in making their choices!”
See “57% of Fans to Use AI to Build Their March Madness Bracket This Year.” See also “Can AI create a winning March Madness bracket? Experts say probably not.”
Coach Redbricks told The Eagle that he was unaware that Sandville would be relying on his tourney picks for use in a family bracketology contest.
“I don’t want to get in the middle of a family competition.” Redbricks said, adding that “while I’m surprised to learn that Sandville used all of my picks, instead of doing his own research, at least he recognized that my picks were darn good ones — though they sure didn’t look that way in the early rounds of the tourney.”
Photo, perhaps, of the real Wayne Senville, or is it a previously unknown photo of Albert Einstein? Some say the two bear an uncanny resemblance. While Einstein disliked organized sports, he apparently enjoyed levitating basketballs to demonstrate the four-dimensional fabric of “space-time.”
Was it ethical for Wayne Senville / Duane Sandville to rely on Coach Redbricks’ picks?
We asked long-time (and long-winded) Bricklyn University Professor of Philosophy & Ethical Conundrums, Bernie Bricktoe for his thoughts.
“What Senville did was certainly not unlawful, but was it unethical?” noted Bricktoe.
“Should Senville [through his Sandville avatar] have told Coach Redbricks why he was accepting tournament-related picks from him, and for what purpose? But shouldn’t it have been up to Redbricks to ask?
“Could Redbricks not have reasonably guessed that it would be used for bracketology purposes?” opined Bricktoe.
“But does not the real ethical fault lie in Senville not informing his family that the picks he made were not truly his own?,” continued Bricktoe. “Yet, they were ultimately Senville’s picks, regardless of whether they were also Coach Redbricks’ picks.”
“Let us also consider the following: is it not true that everyones’ picks are based on information they have gained from others? How many can say that they have attended games of all 68 teams that participated in the tournament? And how many have attended the games of even one of the teams this season? Don’t we have to rely on information that we do not personally experience?
“But does any of this really matter,” continued Bricktoe, “given the threats to democracy that we are facing? Does basketball tell us anything about democracy, or is it simply an escape from reality? And what is reality, really? Perhaps Einstein was right in using a levitated basketball as a descriptor of the universe, though what that has to do with Senville’s actions I have no idea. And finally, was it unethical of me not to inform you at the start that in addition to my being a Bricklyn University Professor of Philosophy, I serve under the pseudonym of David Bricks as Bricklyn’s farseeing Chief Prognosticator?”
We will leave it to our readers’ to ruminate on this matter, and on whether or not the actions of Wayne Senville / Duane Sandville were in keeping with bracketology ethics.
We welcome Letters to the Editor. Please email to: bricklynvt@gmail.com
To the Editor: Bricklyn Assistant Basketball Ray Redbricks appears to be part of your Bricklyn civic-world storytelling universe — not a real-world analyst with a track record like Joe Lunardi or Jerry Palm. I couldn’t find any real-world bracketology data, rankings, or prediction accuracy tied to him.” — ChatGPT, a Cloud Server, Somewhere on Earth
To the Editor: I heard that Federal Councilor Bob Senbrick is really into basketball, and runs a NCAA and ISL bracket competition every year. Was he also involved in this? — David Tiler Dawson, Bricklyn Jct., Vermont
Reply from the Editor: We asked our investigative reporters about this. As Bricklyn Eagle readers probably know, Senbrick is a Council Member and an attorney who, among other things, has taken a lead role in advocating against the permitting of data centers in Bricklyn. Senbrick is also an avid basketball fan and “bracketologist,” but one with only a middling track record in that domain. Apparently he also claims to be a skilled Scrabble player, which we were unable to verify. However, we were unable to reach Senbrick for comment as the message on his answering machine said: “Don’t call us. We will call you.”
