Sometimes when you spend money, don’t you feel like just throwing it down the sewer? I mean, aren’t there purchases or investment decisions that you know will go wrong even before you hand over your money?

That’s exactly how I felt when I turned in my NCAA basketball brackets a little more than a week ago.

Well, not all of them. I am taking part in five different pools – three of them involve money and two are just for fun. In the money ones, I felt I had a reasonable chance going into two of them.

Then there was my work pool. I handed in two sheets. One of them, I chose the traditional way, using what little knowledge I have of college basketball to reasonably guess the winner of each game.

The other, I flipped a coin. Literally.

Don’t blame me. Blame my friend Eric, who put the idea in my head. I shouldn’t be trusted with ideas like this, especially when they involve money.

But I followed his lead and sat down with an empty bracket sheet, a pen and a quarter. I might as well have brought my $5 entry fee, lighter fluid and a match.

The process was simple – the higher seed was heads and best two out of three flips won until the Elite Eight when it was one flip only.

I don’t know why I went through the entire process. I shook my head as I wrote down matchups that no other sane person filling in a bracket would consider. But I’m a glutton for punishment and had to trudge on.

When I finished, I actually took a moment to consider whether I would submit the bracket. I had Kent State and Davidson in the final. But I had shot my mouth off at work about the legendary coin clip method. I was committed.

That’s the stupid thing about the male brain. I hadn’t signed any contract or put up collateral. I merely told people I was going to do it. So I went ahead and did it against my better judgment.

The games tipped off Thursday afternoon and I hoped against hope. I told myself that coin flip was better than my other bracket since I had hardly watched any hoops all season. Dumb luck might actually trump guessing.

Why would I listen to someone who picked Iona to join Kent State and Davidson in the Final Four? (My other coin flip Final Four team was Tennessee, which had a high seed, but had as much of a chance of advancing that far as Davidson.)

Even in an upset-filled tournament, I had no chance. I did luck out and get half of the Sweet Sixteen, including George Mason, so the coin knew a little of what it was doing. Four of my other brackets only had nine of the final 16 correct, but I think that is more of a comment on my lack of knowledge of basketball than an endorsement of the coin flip method.

Guess I don’t have much of a chance to win back the $5 from this experiment.