Ryan Haughee

An annual tradition of mine is to create a 24 team playoff bracket with conference winners getting auto bids. What started as a wild hypothetical scenario has slowly moved closer to reality. Here's the 2024 version:

@aakashgupta 2014?!

You check your Apple Watch in the morning. Sleep score: 62. You decide it's going to be a foggy day. And then it is. A 2014 Colorado College study suggests the score itself causes the fog. 164 people walked into a lab. Researchers hooked them up to fake EEG equipment and told them the readout would show their REM percentage from the night before. Then they fabricated a number. Half the room was told 28.7%. Half was told 16.2%. The machine wasn't measuring anything. Participants took four cognitive tests. The Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test, where you add numbers spoken at increasing speed and hold your last sum in working memory while computing the next. And the Controlled Oral Word Association Task, where you generate as many words as you can starting with a single letter under time pressure. Both are gold-standard measures of attention and executive function used in clinical neurology. The 28.7% group outperformed the 16.2% group on both. Significantly. How rested participants actually felt that morning predicted nothing. The mechanism is mindset priming an executive resource. When you believe you slept well, you allocate cognitive effort more aggressively. You don't conserve. You don't pre-disengage. Belief about the resource changes how you spend it. Two control conditions ruled out demand characteristics. Participants weren't trying harder because they thought they should. Real measurable cognitive performance shifted with the number on the readout. The Apple Watch sleep score. The Oura ring readiness number. The morning ritual of checking either one is taxing the resource you're about to need. The performance gap from a fabricated REM percentage was larger than the gap from how rested participants actually felt. The number was louder than the night.

RALEIGH NEVER DISAPPOINTS 🔊

THIS IS PLAYOFF HOCKEY 🗣️ Watch Senators vs. Hurricanes Game 1 on Sportsnet 📺

@RyanSura18 Am I missing something or are both of those perfectly reasonable advancement numbers? Over half of the teams win their first round and just under a quarter win two rounds?

This is a brutal playoff trend 👇 Since 2020-21, 21 teams entered the playoffs with a bottom-10 team save % over the final month 🔸 14/21 didn’t make it past Round 2 🔸 10 lost in Round 1 This year's list: Hurricanes (31st) Ducks (28th) Penguins (27th) Senators (24th) Oilers (23rd) Mammoth (22nd)

My eyes so red

@tBushGaming is the house tour still tonight lmao

War Room

@RicodyahBoscobr @tBushGaming @hannahcmontoya Need space for all the brain power.

W @hannahcmontoya

@tBushUpdate @tBushGaming Thanks!

@RyanHaughee @tBushGaming Losers of Round 3 in the Lower Bracket will play a tiebreaker match

🚨🌳 Due to auto-qualification from Challengers Elite Season 1, @tBushGaming is NOT in this weekend's Elite Stage 2 Qualifier: - 5 Teams Qualified from S1: Bush Gaming, For Fun Esports, Falcons Green, Huntsmen, and For Fun Pink --Qualified Teams shown in GREEN on sheet - 16 Teams in EQ2 competing for 7 Qualification spots -Including: Falcons White, OMiT Brooklyn, P7 Notorious, Team Wrecks, FaZe Falcons, Stallions Red, and Stallions Black --EQ2 Teams shown in BLUE on sheet - Rosters/Seeding/Bracket for EQ2 pictured below 🌳 Bush Gaming holds #1 Seed in NA based on Pro Points (via @ChallengerStats) 📅NEXT BUSH MATCHES: Elite Week 1 March 4th/5th #Unshaven🌳

DOWN 2 WITH 2 MINUTES LEFT AND NOW THE HURRICANES TAKE THE LEAD!!

@tBushGaming If that’s Standard Pour yall need to order the Buffalo Chicken Sandwich and be prepared to eat like a king

Sas got us to dinner safely. Fasoli at head of the table. Update on JJ soon

🐶 VALUE DOG PICK (6.8) 🏀 𝗨𝗧𝗔 𝗝𝗮𝘇𝘇 𝗠𝗟 (+𝟮𝟰𝟬 𝗗𝗞) 📊 Betting Split: 82% public tickets on LA Clippers 🔪 Sharp handle divergence: 18% of bets, 39% of handle on UTA Jazz 📈 Odds Movement: +330 → +240

🎯 January 27, 2026 Betting Picks

@AnymoreJohan @BudElliott3 With the ND Top-12 = autobid rule, Miami would’ve had to pass Alabama. 1 IU 2 OSU 3 UGA 4 TTU 5 ORE 6 MISS 7 A&M 8 OU 9 BAMA 10 ND 11 TULN 12 DUKE

@BudElliott3 With these new rules wouldn't Duke definitely be in this year? And very possible that a pretty weak team gets in with an upset in conf champ? Would the committee have selected Miami if Duke was in this year? My pet theory is getting an ACC team was a factor this year

This is a good thing. (The rule, not that it wasn’t publicly known)

@puckmarks Are your player cards publicly accessible?

Nikolaj Ehlers has managed to stay as one of the most underrated players in the NHL. A lot of people know he’s good, but don’t know quite how good. He’s been everything the Canes wanted even if the points haven’t entirely been there (which should regress too). #CarolinaCulture

@JacksonCoates @tBushGaming @Jerrythekid21 @BarstoolBigCat @stoolpresidente @Methodz quit snitching, let the boys bounce

@tBushGaming @Jerrythekid21 @BarstoolBigCat @stoolpresidente @Methodz

JJ was BOUNCING ON IT for the Grand Finals 😭

@Dawgfan19881 @BudElliott3 Which of the Big Ten teams lost to a team that went 2-6 in the ACC?

@BudElliott3 Bama ends up the 2 seed. 2 wins over Georgia is better than anything either of the big ten teams have done.

Bama still being alive to get the 3-seed and a bye or be completely out of the playoffs is wild. What a wide spread of outcomes

@Hullabaloo_WPN @Coach_Maier @RossDellenger JMU #20 in the AP poll. Duke didn’t get a vote. It’s not a question — JMU at 12-1 is in over Duke.

@Coach_Maier @RossDellenger The playoffs reward the 5 highest ranked conference champions. Big10, SEC & Big12 are essentially "guaranteed" to be 3 of highest ranked 5 conference champs. Tulane or North Texas would rank higher than Duke. Then it would come down to Duke vs JMU for that last 5th conf champ.

Cal upsets SMU, sending 7-5 Duke to the ACC title game against Virginia while 10-2 Miami sits home. A Duke win in the ACC title game could make for an interesting situation. The top 5 *highest-ranked* conference champs get an AQ. Could a second G5 champ (JMU?) get in over Duke?

@AGoldFan Chatfield was dynamite tonight

What an unbelievable game. Incredible win. 5-4 in a shootout! 🐳🐳🐳 Hall 🐳🐳 Jarvis 🐳 Andersen

@nickkucholtz I’m hearing there may be weather concerns so maybe don’t crack the monster

@RyanHaughee 40 minutes away now and still haven’t even cracked the monster so I’m going for it. I’ll regret it midway through the 2nd Q

Bought a monster and we are 1 hour 40 minutes from kick. It’s now or never, friends. Decision will be made in half an hour. (I know nobody cares.)