It's March Madness Time! Apparently.

March Madness, generally, is a hell of a tournament. Often I consider the first two rounds of the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship to be the four best sports days of the year, and usually I can't wait for them. In college the first two rounds always fell during my spring break, and I recall each year that my friend Duane and I would sit down on his couch at 11:50 and not move until midnight, keeping our laptops with our brackets open all the while. In short, it was exciting, amazing, thrilling and for much of March it's almost always been all I can think about.

But not this year.

Don't ask me why, exactly, because I can't quite tell, but for some reason I'm just sort of ambivalent this year. Perhaps it's because I missed the actual selection show while in the U.S. for the first time in years so I could have dinner with my cousin in Georgetown on Sunday, or perhaps it's because a busy schedule at work has kept me from seeing the bracket until this afternoon, or just maybe it's because the only basketball game that really matters this year happens to be Wednesday night and not in the NCAA Tournament at all.

It could be any of those reasons. In all honesty, I really have no idea, but for some reason, I'm just not overly excited, to the point that I filled out my bracket this afternoon as almost more of an obligation than a joy. And it also happens to be a highly unresearched bracket. Just how unresearched it is, you ask? Well, a year ago, I was in Israel, and hastily filled out a bracket on a timed computer terminal in the southern desert city of Eilat, and that bracket performed, er, terribly.

That bracket, filled out in a span of forty seconds because the time purchased by my five shekels was expiring, was more well thought out than this one.

Really!

So yeah, I have no idea who is going to win or if I picked anything even remotely close to what could or will happen, but you can see the uneducated misery to the left yourself. I decided to go with a tried and true method of picking a few upsets early and mostly going with the chalk later. Not that it matters since with the pointlessly expanded bracket this year, the odds of getting the whole shabang right were a tidy 9.25 quintillion to one back in the old format and I don't have nearly the energy required to figure it out in the new one. Apparently, I have a better chance of winning an Olympic gold medal, which I supposed means... I have a chance of winning an Olympic gold medal.

Essentially, as the numerous other brackets to be found on the internet prove, we really have no idea what will happen. You may as well hand in a bracket to your pool where Princeton wins. Or ones that don't bother with basketball, but instead seek to answer the really big questions that plague philosophers.

In my bracket, you'll notice that, among other things, I've picked Pitt to win the whole thing mostly because a) they got a joke of a No. 2 seed in Florida, b) I think they'll be driven by their early exit from the Big East Tournament, c) I didn't want to see Duke win. Not that that matters since I have UNC coming out of the Blue Devils' bracket, but I have the feeling they're going to get picked off somewhere.

And speaking of getting picked off, you better believe I don't have No. 1 Ohio State reaching the Final Four. And how could I pick against a team with the versatile Jared Sullinger, you ask? Well the answer is simple. I don't care how good your record is. No team -- none -- gets taken to the final minute by Northwestern not once, but twice, including once on a neutral floor, and then makes it to the Final Four. Sorry. It ain't happening, and just because I didn't see it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

And trust me on this. I'm a sportswriter. I interview people and write stories about their impressive rookie campaigns. I know these things. The fact that I may have written stories about two different teams being touted as championship contenders only to see both of them lose their next game is entirely immaterial.

My word is as good as gold here. My bracket is brilliant. My bracket will rule the day. My bracket will almost certainly get every single game right. Just imagine how perfect my bracket would be if I were actually into it this year.

Don't worry, I'm sure I will be come Thursday. Happy basketballing.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Of course! What was I thinking trying to actually predict the winner of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament? That was just silly. I should have known there'd be absolutely no point because I could never get the damn thing right.

Well, let's not say never. I've had a fair amount of success picking national champions and getting most of the Final Four -- though I've only gotten the entire Final Four once -- but after yesterday, it's official. My bracket has never been this dead this fast ever. In fact, I'd go so far as to say yesterday was the single most devastating day I've ever had in the NCAA Tournament.

So how did that happen?

Well, it all started with those adorable Gaels from St. Mary's who decided, "What the hell? Let's beat Villanova." And so they did, dumping one of my Final Four teams in unceremonious fashion as the Gaels played exciting, inspired basketball with a plethora of wild three pointers and 'Nova's Scottie Reynolds played basketball about as well as I do.

That's not a good thing.


I understand that taking the Wildcats to win that bracket may not have been the wisest maneuver on my part, but I simply didn't trust Duke to reach another Final Four and Nova was the next best thing. Whoops. The Blue Devils now appear to have a walk to Indianapolis, and after losing a Final Four team in the second round of the tournament I had assumed I was pretty much done.

And assumption turned into certainty when this nugget arrived. Yeah, that's right, the fighting Kurt Warners of Northern Iowa somehow managed to shock the University of Kansas, a team I and around 42.4% of the country expected to win the National Championship. In a matter of hours I had lost two Final Four teams and my National Champion. On Day 3 of the Tournament.

So, uh, I'm not going to win any of my pools this year.

I can accept this mostly because watching massive upsets like Northern Iowa's early win over the presumptive title favorite is part of what makes the NCAA Tournament so damn great. Early round upsets are plentiful, and while the usual suspects generally get to the late stages we sometimes have something wild and amazing to hang our collective hat on and get to witness the unbridled joy of David slaying Goliath. Yesterday, that is what we got.

What I can reassure myself with is that great minds must think alike, since Barack Obama suffered the same fate as me and will likely not be winning his pool either. Obama can always cling fast to his propensity for making strong choices in the Women's Bracket, where he's apparently 15-for-16 so far. Of course, if you ask me the real excitement lies in the Women's NIT, where my Wildcats, just four years after I covered them in the midst of a typically abysmal campaign, got their first postseason win in program history this week.

As for Barry, no longer having a chance in his NCAA pool will afford him more time to focus on somewhat more important endeavors. As for me, I'll be free to focus on some more important endeavors of my own over the next three weeks.

I'm calling it now. Apple gets knocked off by Pumpkin in the Elite Eight.

Meanwhilst, I believe there actually are more basketball games today, with what looks like a far more intriguing slate than we expected yesterday to be. It would be hard for this afternoon's set of games to match what happened on Day 3, but if Gonzaga, Mizzou or Cornell win I may eat my words again.

That is if I have any left.

Of course, you could also watch hockey. I don't know if anyone told you, but it's awesome.