ESPN: Trump to pass on ‘March Madness’ bracket

President Trump is forgoing a recent tradition set by former President Barack Obama: filling out an NCAA “March Madness” bracket.

ESPN reportedly offered Trump the opportunity to fill out his bracket on television, but the president passed, The Washington Post first reported Wednesday.

“We expressed our interest to the White House in continuing the presidential bracket,” an ESPN spokesman said. “They have respectfully declined.”

{mosads}While Trump is anything but television-shy, the decision to pass did not come as a surprise to the sports network, whose executives anticipated that the annual event might not continue from one president to another.

White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the Post that the president was looking forward to “working with ESPN on another opportunity in the near future,” though she did not elaborate on the nature of such an opportunity.

Obama was a self-proclaimed basketball fan and has filled out his tournament brackets on ESPN since he took office in 2009. His 2015 brackets for the men’s and women’s tournaments now belong to the National Museum of American History.

Only once did Obama pick the eventual men’s champions: For his first year, the former president correctly predicted North Carolina would win it all.