Does it really matter….
When we give labels to people.
Now that we are in the heat of March Madness, people want to talk about how bad their brackets were brutally torn apart through one of the wildest first weekends in March Madness history.
We saw KU who was picked to win it all…fail. (I’m ok with that)
Two pictures that summarize the game incase you missed it..
ALI!!!!!
Crying Jayhawks 
Also, if Cornell wins it all then their final record would be 32-4. 32 wins would tie the average ACT score it takes to get in the University. Regardless, the tournament has proven that nobody is perfect. Except for one 17-year-old teenage boy in Chicago.
Alex Hermann has a perfect bracket thus far.
The story here is not the ridiculous odds the kid has overcome in picking a perfect bracket thus far out of millions of entries online. It is the fact that the media can’t get over the fact that the kid has Autism.
The first page is filled with headlines that read something like: Autistic Kid has Perfect Bracket.
Some even ponder how it is possible…
How did that autistic kid pick a perfect bracket?
And I truly wonder if this is all necessary. These articles fail to focus on how through the millions of brackets that are assembled each year, the odds it takes, especially on this year, is crazy unreal.
Instead the media focuses on the autism. I don’t understand why. It isn’t the focus of the story. I feel journalists sometimes look for stories that have recipes for success.
Take for instance Jason McElwain…
A kid that scores 20 points in a basketball game could get the kid a mention in a newspaper or a stat line. If he does it less than four minutes, then it could be worth highlighting. But when you dig deep to find out that Jason McElwain has autism and in his first game ever for varsity he goes off for 20 points, that is truly a great story.
But, for some reason with Alex Helmann, I don’t see that greatness in highlighting his disorder. Picking a bracket is ultimately a series of choices until you pick one winner. It is incredible he picked a perfect bracket until now, like I said the odds of him doing that were unreal.
Some articles, like the one on ESPN, compared the Alex’s accomplishment to his 24 year old brother without autism. Ultimately, it comes down to the journalist’s call in what information to report. If it were me, I would’ve left the information out about Alex’s autism because it takes away from his accomplishment and some people can take the story as poking fun at him by saying only the boy with autism could do this.
Let me know what you think with some comments….
