Live From Detroit: Teams No. 40 and No. 41

It's that time of year, people. The time I start to forsake my friends, loved ones and job for the ultimately foolish experience of carefully timed trips to see sports venues.

Yes, I know that I did already make trips to see the Philadelphia 76ers and Washington Capitals earlier this year, but this right here is my first two-fer and the first time I've actually needed to board a plane to get anywhere. Of course that plane ride started off somewhat bumpy when I found out that Spirit Airlines is actually not the deal they claim to be because they actually charge you $30 to bring a carry-on bag onto the plane. Isn't avoiding bag fees the whole reason we pack light and make carry-ons to begin with?

In any event, the trip since then has been entirely smooth as my good ol' buddy Lindsay was at DTW in no time to pick me up AND THEN WE HAD CULVERS.

So yeah. So far it's been good. The reason for all this commotion of course is that over the next three days I will be knocking two vaunted names off the list of 122 that I have not yet seen before in the Detroit Pistons and the Detroit Red Wings. I actually did see the Detroit Tigers four years ago when I was a senior in college, but even including that day trip from Chicago, I've spent almost no time in Michigan in my life so this will be something of a new experience, and considering that I had completely forgotten about Culver's being in Michigan, this is already worth the trip.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I was particularly excited for Friday night's game for multiple reasons, namely a) Joe Louis Arena, the Joe, looks to be something like the Fenway Park of hockey, b) my seats are going to be awesome, c) they're playing the Blackhawks, who I always enjoy seeing, d) the Blackhawks may well be playing for their playoff lives that night.

It should be fun all around.

Of course, the basketball game comes before that, which should also be fun because the Pistons, in terms of historical significance, I find to be one of the more underrated franchises in North American sports. Their history includes names like Joe Dumars, Isiah "I'm an awful GM, but really a pretty good basketball player" Thomas, Dick Vitale and the recently Hall of Fame-inducted Dennis Rodman. You know, back before the transformation.

Of course, as the 11th-ranked team in the East that history isn't having much of an effect on the Pistons right now, nor is it on the 12th-ranked Nets whom they'll be playing tonight. But if anything, it'll probably be better basketball than we saw Monday night when the Butler Bulldogs went colder than Michigan in January in the second half of the NCAA National Championship Game. During one stretch, Butler went a stunning 1 for 22 from the field in the second half.

So yeah. That may have been the worst National Championship Game I've ever seen. Hell the women's game the next night was better. Really.

And those teams had something to play for, unlike the squads I'm seeing tonight, who will mostly be jockeying for possible Draft lottery positioning. Then again, that's something the Nets are probably used to at this point, unlike their Prudential Center co-tenants, my New Jersey Devils. The Devils played Pittsburgh last night to an eventual 4-2 loss in an utterly meaningless game as far as New Jersey was concerned. This is tough to see as a Devils fan, but considering the last time the Devils played a regular season game with nothing on the line and no playoffs to look forward to was on April 2, 1989, I suppose I can live with it. Bizarrely, those Devils were disappointed to miss the playoffs after getting one win away from the Stanley Cup Final the season before. Also, hey, the Mets are somehow in first place, so how bad could life really be?

Of course, those teams would have plenty to play for in the coming seasons. Who's to say what will happen for the Pistons and Nets after tonight? As for what happens tonight itself, well, probably some mediocre basketball.

But I will be there to find out. And that's the important thing.

Just The Start We Were Looking For

Now, I don't want to go out on a limb and say that after the offseason of no impressive player acquisitions and billion-dollar lawsuits against the ownership the Mets suffered through, that after six innings it looked like the Amazins were about to suffer through the worst possible start to their season.

But, uh, it looked pretty bad.

Not only did Mike Pelfrey's Opening Day start fall apart on an unexpected grand slam by that immortal slugger John Buck in the fourth inning, but the Mets were actually on the short end of a no-hitter by Florida ace Josh Johnson through six innings before finally breaking the spell and ultimately succumbing in a 6-2 loss in at Sun Life Stadium. Seriously, the best part about the whole night for a Mets fan was that Clarence Clemons of the E Street Band played the National Anthem on his sax.

So that happened.

I know getting my knickers in a twist over this is, of course, a fairly foolish thing to do. After all, there are 161 games left to go this season, so getting antsy when there is plenty of time to change is irrational at best. But should I even bother to believe that there's a chance things will get better than they were Friday night? I mean, they ought to. I have a hard time believing they'd get much worse.

But that's why they play the other 161 games, so here we go in about seven and a half hours for Jon Niese and Ricky Nolasco, which should be a ripper, or something. If the Mets can pull off a win that'll be exciting even though an awful team does that 60 times a year or so, but if they CAN do that maybe we'll forget the mediocre that lies ahead over the next six months. Or at the very least, perhaps fans can make more hilarious ticket sales pitches like this one.



But even if the Mets are awful, life isn't all bad in the sports realm today.

For one, while all of us were sleeping Geelong kicked some ass in a closer-than-it-needed-to-be affair in Perth in an eventual 89-78 win over Fremantle, which puts the Cats at 2-0 before their big NATIONALLY TELEVISED GAME AGAINST PORT ADELAIDE NEXT WEEK. And by "nationally televised" I mean "in the United States on ESPN2". See? I didn't make up that this sport existed. It may be at midnight on a Saturday night, but since I have to be up early for work the next day anyway, I'll be in front of the TV. Also, I might be tired from my impending trip to Detroit, but more on that later.

In other news, the New Jersey Devils' season is probably over, but there is a minor lift coming tonight when after missing nearly all the season with a torn meniscus, Zach Parise will be back on the ice when the Devils host the Canadiens. The actual impact of his return on this season is probably close to nil, but it'll at least make the Devils fans among us a little happier for the night.

Truth be told though, I probably won't be watching much of either the Devils or the Mets tonight, because rumor has it there are some "basketball games" of minor import. So yeah, most of my attention will be focused solely on the Final Four, which, while I stand nothing to gain as far as brackets or survival pools are concerned at this point, is still, you know, interesting. Or at least fun.

Besides, if by some chance Butler wins the National Championship or even, heaven's to betsy, Virginia Commonwealth, we'll all have a fun little story to tell our kids about, right? Right?

The answer is yes. We will. More fun than I'll have talking about the 2011 Mets anyway.

When Winning Is Losing. And Vice Versa.

I do not like Duke. I believe that's what makes me most like the rest of America. In fact, I'm fairly certain the only non-Duke graduate who actively roots for the school is my cousin Geoff, who told me this morning, "Never bet against the Blue Devils." Of course, that seems particularly odd to say today considering Duke was rather surprisingly bounced from the NCAA Tournament last night by Arizona in the Sweet Sixteen. I won't get into the peculiarities like how it could be fair for a No. 1 seed to host a school from Tuscon in Anaheim, or how Duke could have seemingly forgotten to play basketball in the second half when the Wildcats went on a very impressive run.

But I will say this. I was not betting against the Blue Devils. In fact, I was betting on them. And after letting me down the one time I was actually rooting for Duke, it could be a while before I do it again.

As I alluded to in my last entry, I was in a survival pool for this year's Dance in which I fared far better than my actual bracket -- which I haven't even looked at in days -- did. In fact, after a wild Sunday night, I was one of just five people remaining, and I had assumed that of the games Thursday night, Duke was the one sure bet to win. And so, with the chance of winning a $700 prize on the line, I put my hopes with the Blue Devils and watched.

And then that happened.

So yeah, I was out of the running for $700, and even the considerable silver lining of "But Duke lost, which makes everyone happy" wasn't going to comfort me.

Then, there was a window opened about 15 minutes later in New Orleans. I have a soft spot in my heart for the Wisconsin Badgers since several of my friends, my sister and my grandmother are all alums, and if Northwestern is out of the running, which, uh, they were, I'll usually throw my lot with Bucky. But when I noticed that all the remaining participants in the pool had Wisconsin advancing, and that a win by Butler would knock everyone out, I changed my tune.

See, if anyone advanced to Friday I was done completely, but if the five remaining participants all lost in one night, we would have a five-way tie and a split pot. I wouldn't quite be getting $700, but a take of $148 wasn't too shabby, and my decision was made despite the overwhelming temptation to cheer for a team that would offer a basketball scholarship to Christopher "Kid" Reid of the early 90's hip-hop duo Kid N' Play.

What moxie.

Fortunately for me, Butler answered the call in a win that really was never in doubt until Wisconsin made a late rally, which led me to two conclusions, a) While it wouldn't be quite as satisfying as a $700 take from this year's pool, I still managed to win an extremely satisfying $148 -- my best take from a March Madness pool ever, and b) Butler probably shouldn't really be an eight seed.

Granted, the Bulldogs did go a relatively paltry 23-9 this regular season with five losses in the Horizon League, but their comfort and determination on the big stage has become clearly evident in big tournament wins over No. 1 Pittsburgh and now No. 4 Wisconsin. On almost gets the sense that even without Gordon Hayward, Brad Stevens and his boys were simply biding their time until it was March.

At this point, seedings aside, I can't see how one wouldn't give them a fighting chance at knocking off Florida Saturday and landing in their second consecutive Final Four. And once they're there, playing like they are, all things are certain. All I know is that from now on, when I watch, I won't be doing so with so much anxiety.

After all, despite losing, I made my money. It's almost like playing for the Mets.

Ok, So I've Had Better First Weekends Than That

I'm guessing when I said last week that this was by far the least research I had ever done before filling out my NCAA bracket that I must not have been lying. The first four days of the Tournament this year were outlandishly exciting, but also, uh, not what I predicted. On the first day alone I lost three teams from my sweet sixteen, one from my Elite Eight and wound up a mediocre 9-7. While that didn't inspire much confidence, at least my Final Four was still intact.

You know, until the second round, when my National Champion spit the bit against Butler on an utterly bizarre series of fouls in the games final seconds. But that's cool -- it's only the second year in a row that my eventual champion was sent packing in the round of 32.

Now don't get me wrong. Butler, obviously, has some experience, so I suppose in general, it's not really that crazy for them to be making another deep run in the NCAAs, but I have to be honest. I thought I'd do a wee bit better than this At this point my bracket is so shot that I have nothing to watch for except pure love of the game, which, really, is utterly silly.

Then again I'm still alive in my survivor pool, so at least there's that.

Of course, that I'm watching basketball at all after Northwestern's utterly bizarre loss in the NIT quarterfinals last night/this morning at Washington State, might just be a testament to my own intestinal fortitude. This was a game that featured a shockingly intense student crowd for an NIT game, the Wildcats doing something they've done maybe once in my life ever by rallying from a double-digit deficit to take a lead in the second half on the road, a potential walk-off foul after a game-tying goal tend in the final ten seconds and then someone missing both of those potential walk-off free throws which prompted this statement from me.

I then realized that if God was a Wildcat, Northwestern would have been to the NCAA Tournament once in the past seven and a half decades, making my statement patently ridiculous.

The Cats would go on to lose in an equally as bizarre overtime that nearly saw them get the ball back down 1 with 20 seconds left simply because the Washington State player lost his handle on the ball, before Alex Marcotullio missed not one but two three-pointers to tie the game at the final buzzer to end what is -- I'm not making this up -- the deepest postseason run Northwestern has ever had.

Seriously, why do I watch college basketball anymore? Or at least why Northwestern?

Oh, and the winning team had a player who had been suspended and had his suspension lifted within 12 hours.

Fun times.

So that's how college basketball has treated me in the past week, but fortunately I get the distraction of Aussie Rules Football finally being back this season after Carlton topped Richmond by 20 points this morning. Of course the season doesn't really start until Geelong has its first bounce tomorrow morning against St. Kilda, which I'm sure you're all waking up at 4:30 a.m. for.

Ok, I can sense that I'm losing all of you at this point. Perhaps it's time to go. Hopefully this weekend's basketball goes better than last.

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.

NFL Picks Week Sixteen: In Which I Forget Week Fifteen

Let me tell you all, I have had a doozy of a week so far and once you're done reading through that riveting Senators-Predators preview you're reading I'm going to tell you all about it. Ok, good. Yes, I know things could be worse, and in general life is fine, but some of you might have noticed that I didn't write for a whole week, and that is because when some awful, horrifying, unexpected, gut-wrenching things happen you are left speechless.

I am without speech. Still.

Sunday's colossal debacle against the Eagles, which saw the Giants go from likely No. 2 seed to playoff life support in a matter of seven and a half minutes is not something that I have yet been able to comprehend or grasp. In fact, I'm still not able to speak about it out loud with thoughts of anger and depression over what could have been. Granted, the Giants aren't exactly done. If they defeat the Packers this Sunday they'll have clinched a berth and will still have an outside chance of winning the No. 5 seed lottery to face whatever dung pile "wins" the NFC West, but should Big Blue not come through in Green Bay they'll need help on the final day of the season.

And ain't all that just a bit angst-inducing?

Well, yeah. It is. I do like New York's chances since Aaron Rodgers, while he is expected to be under center for the Pack, is still coming off a concussion that one would have to think leaves him a little woozy, no? I guess we'll find out on Sunday.

After the Giants game I was unable to think or comprehend anything. After all, only two other games, the blown 24-point lead against San Francisco in the 2002 playoffs, and Super Bowl XXXV come close to the gut punch this game delivered. But as I always tell myself, I can handle the depression with the greatest upset in football history in my back pocket.

Of course, that was just the start of a week that has quickly entered a downward spiral.

To make the pain worse, my fantasy football team decided to score all of one touchdown in the semifinals which robbed me of a potentially hefty payday. That one, I'm sure, matters to a lot of you.

But I had an ace up my sleeve. After two full years without seeing a Northwestern basketball game in person, the Wildcats were coming to Madison Square Garden this week, giving me the chance to see a squad that was one of eight remaining undefeateds in the country and just might be the one that finally breaks NU's hex of missing the NCAA Tournament. Of course, it was difficult to feel as though Northwestern's place in March was assured given it had played a non-conference schedule that a group of fifth-graders could probably finish at least .500 against. Still, like clockwork, the Cats took out St. Francis on Monday night with me and some 2,000 other of my closest friends watching.

All was well and good. Until Tuesday.

Before I go into the game itself, allow me to warn any of you from ever leaving a ticket at Will Call in Madison Square Garden. I had two unused tickets Tuesday, and after leaving one for my friend Kristen at Will Call, a homeless man asked if he could have any ticket to the game I could spare and feeling as if there were worse crimes in the world than letting a homeless man see a basketball game, I obliged him. This wound up biting me in the ass at halftime when Kristen showed up and called me with the revelation that MSG had lost my ticket. To make matters worse, the supervisor in charge of will call insisted that without a ticket there was nothing he could do. I'm fairly certain that really he just didn't want to help.

He's a big man after all.

After harassing the supervisor long enough, one of the will call employees, realizing that dozens of tickets which would not be used were still sitting on the table, simply handed Kristen one, prompting the supervisor to smugly chirp, "See? Everything works out."

I hope he's never known the touch of a woman without paying for it.

In any event, with Kristen in the building and Northwestern holding a halftime lead against St. John's, everything seemed nice and fine until the Wildcats suddenly forgot how to shoot and Luka Mirkovic forgot out to play defense in the paint. One unexpected loss to a team expected to be a nonfactor later and suddenly Northwestern's perfect record had a blemish that just may keep them from dancing in three months.

So all that was pretty bad. Then last night I got the flu. So everything's going great. Amazingly, the most normal thing that seems to be happening is that the Devils fired coach John MacLean this morning and brought in Jacques Lemaire for a third tour behind the bench. Then again, GM Lou Lamoriello goes through about seven coaches a season anyway.

Alright, time for some picks.

Last week: 6-10-0
Season: 110-105-10

PITTSBURGH (-15) over Carolina
Dallas (-7) over ARIZONA
NY Giants (+3) over GREEN BAY
New England (-9) over BUFFALO
NY Jets (+1) over CHICAGO
Baltimore (-4) over CLEVELAND
KANSAS CITY (-5) over Tennessee
ST. LOUIS (-2) over San Francisco
Detroit (+4) over MIAMI
JACKSONVILLE (-7) over Washington
San Diego (-8) over CINCINNATI
Houston (-3) over DENVER
Indianapolis (-3) over OAKLAND
TAMPA BAY (-6) over Seattle
Minnesota (+14) over PHILADELPHIA
ATLANTA (-3) over New Orleans

There you have it folks. Hopefully next week is better. Oh, and Merry Christmas.

Ok, Maybe Just Urinating On Persistence Of Memory

I know Mondays are usually reserved for stories of visits to stadia past, I don't blame the five of you out there who read this regularly for being miffed that I'm taking a week off, but as I've said before there are only so many stories to fill the next three decades.

I'm going to take a week off once in a while to keep myself from running out of material. Particularly since I assume you're all distracted by that preview for tonight's Blackhawks-Predators game.

This week seemed like as opportune a moment as any to do so because I somehow neglected to discuss this particularly exciting news item from this past week. Yes, I had mentioned a few weeks ago my increasing angst over the NCAA's impending decision to expand the NCAA Tournament, with rumors flying high that the nearly perfect 64-team bracket would be forsaken in the name of a 96-team cacophony of increased revenues and confused office pools.

An expansion to 96 teams would have been awful for a number of reasons -- and I wasn't the only one who thought so -- but fortunately for anyone who loves college basketball or loves filling out their bracket according to which mascot they think is cutest, it won't be happening. Not immediately anyway. Instead the tourney will be expanding to a 68-team format, which is not ideal, but still the better option. And once again, I'm not the only one who thinks so. Of course, I already think the 65-team tournament we've been treated to since 2001 is a little silly anyway. While everyone adores the 64-team bracket, and rightfully so, the play-in game that pits the 64th and 65th teams in the field against one another is a worthless piece of television drudgery.

I don't think anyone bothers to watch what the NCAA calls the "Opening Round Game", and even fewer people think typical entrants like Coppin State or Morehead State have any chance of actually doing anything once they make it to the 64-team field. In fact, this game is so pointless that I'm fairly sure the only time I've watched it was when I was stuck in O'Hare airport my junior year of college. And I watch anything that can call itself a sport. Hell, as I write this, I'm staying up until 3 a.m. to watch and Aussie Rules Footy match between Geelong and Carlton FC.

And I was planning on it.

And yet, I've never been bothered to watch the Opening Round Game of the NCAA Tournament, and this expansion to 68 teams is likely to simply add three more such games -- one for each region -- to the mix. But I'm fine with this. I still think the play-in games are silly, and don't particularly plan on watching them, but the integrity of the rest of the tournament, which retains its basic structure, is still in place, and that is a massive sigh of relief to everyone from fans to reporters, who nearly universally disdained the idea of a 96-team setup.

Aside from avoiding the massive expansion, the new television contract negotiated by the NCAA also has one intriguing and overlooked benefit to its new deal. Lost in the discussion over the muted expansion is the fact that the NCAA's new 14-year $10.8 billion deal is not just with CBS, which has broadcast the NCAA Tournament since 1982, but also Turner Broadcasting System. This is, for the fans, an awesome development. Starting next year, the days of keeping CBS on the TV and hoping they might switch to the tight game that may make or break your bracket in the Dance's first round or being forced to watch out of market games on your computer will be long gone.

Instead, the first round will be broadcast on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. I haven't the slightest clue if I have truTV on my cable package, but I'm guess by next March I will. The benefit of this is obvious. Instead of waiting for the CBS control room to move its slow trigger finger, all 32 first-round games will be broadcast live across the four networks, meaning we can watch whatever game we damn well please. This might be the best development for college basketball fans since Dick Vitale.



What might even be more interesting is that starting in 2016 the National Championship Game will alternate between CBS and TBS, which must make this the first time the NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship Game hasn't been on basic network television -- a wild development in its own right.

Of course, we ought not to delude ourselves. For the NCAA, this whole deal is still about money. NCAA interim President Jim Isch stated in the press release announcing the deal that, “This is an important day for intercollegiate athletics and the 400,000 student-athletes who compete in NCAA sports... This agreement will provide on average more than $740 million annually to our conferences and member schools to help student-athletes in 23 sports learn and compete.” Now, if you do the math, were this contract actually distributed amongst those 400,000 athletes, each would receive $27,000 a piece, which isn't too shabby, but I'm guessing the vast majority of that money won't actually directly filter down to supporting the costs participating in college athletics. Someone's paying the piper. And someone's getting paid by the piper.

That said, the constrained expansion is a huge relief to most fans around the country, and on a personal note, I'm extremely relieved that making the tournament will still be an accomplishment. This was of particular importance to me because my alma mater, as I've noted before, is the only BCS school to never go dancing. Were the the tournament expanded to 96 teams, next season would likely spell the end to that drought -- Northwestern has made the NIT, which would likely be enveloped by the expansion, each of the last two seasons. However, making the Dance at long last would feel cheap to me if it came about only as part of an expanded field.


And guess what? The Northwestern players agree.


Or at least Kevin Coble does. Regardless, all of us can breath a deep sigh of relief, particularly if we pull for the Wildcats. Despite our worst fears, the integrity of college basketball's grandest event seems to be intact for at least one more year, with a major improvement to boot. The only negative that could come from this is if another Northwestern collapse drops them from the 2011 field and makes me wish we were, in fact in a 96-team Tournament so I could taste the Dance just once.


But hopefully that won't happen. Because if it does, I'll look like quite the hypocrite. 

And no one wants that.

What If Verbal Kint And Dave Kujan Just Died Of Brain Aneurysms?

Well if that happened we'd probably all be a bit frustrated because it would be just about the least satisfying ending to a great movie we could possibly imagine -- short of the two of them just hugging for a few minutes. No Keyser Soze, no Kobayashi, no Dean Keaton. The Usual Suspects is just a big fat dud at the end.

That would totally suck.

I bring this up because that's pretty much what we got last night with Duke's victory in the NCAA National Championship Game. Don't get me wrong. The game was phenomenal the whole way through, and Butler proved they belonged on the national stage, but after one of the greatest tournaments in recent memory, the team that wound up cutting down the nets was the one team that absolutely no one wanted to see win. And that leaves a profoundly unsatisfying taste in the mouths of just about everyone who doesn't live in Durham, North Carolina.

And it's quite a shame that we lost what could have been the most appropriate ending to such a wild month of basketball when Gordon Hayward heaved up a potential game-winner three-pointer from half court and it clanged off the rim at the buzzer. We were this close to getting what we wanted -- a moment in college basketball that would have been talked about and replayed for decades -- a small school in its home town knocking off mighty Duke University for the National Championship with a buzzer-beater.

Alas, it was not meant to be, and all we have to remember it by is an incredibly lame game story by whomever was writing it for the AP. He actually writes "What a game!" in the story. Good lord.

It is difficult to know that Butler had not one but two chances to take the lead in the final 30 seconds, but in the end, a great game at the end of a phenomenal tournament isn't all that bad. And with the impending expansion of the tournament to 96 teams next year, this isn't the only shining moment college basketball has had, but it may be the last.



In other news, some of you might have noticed that the Mets opened the season yesterday with a solid 7-1 victory over Florida. The game was actually quite taut most of the way until three errors by the defensively inept Marlins opened the floodgates in a four-run sixth inning for New York. Prior to that, Johan Santana and Josh Johnson had been locked up in a tight pitchers duel, with David Wright's first-inning home run providing the only difference.  Eventually the Mets would pull away for the comfortable win, continuing their remarkable record of winning on Opening Day.

Now comes the hard part. Playing the other 161 games. With that pitching staff it won't be easy.

As one of my favorite teams begins its season another's regular season is ending. New Jersey is hardly done. Even if they get eliminated in the first round of the playoffs they'll still be playing until late April. Hopefully they'll be around until June. Either way, the next step in the Devils' close race for the Atlantic Division title with Pittsburgh comes tonight in Atlanta, where Ilya Kovalchuk will make his first appearance since the Thrashers dealt him to New Jersey in February.

While that is the big story, however, what may eventually be the biggest is that a win for Martin Brodeur will make him the first ever member of the 600 win club.

A few years ago, when Brodeur had won his 400th game, I did a brief extrapolation to examine how many wins he would wind up with at his current pace. I assumed some things would slow him down, age and perhaps his triceps injury last year among them. But I had found Brodeur could wind up with as many as 700 wins. I never expected that to happen, but with 600 on the horizon, and Brodeur still winning 40 games a year, with perhaps three seasons left in him, well, it doesn't seem quite so far-fetched.

And given that the most anyone else has ever won is 551 games, well, it's mighty impressive. Here's hoping he crosses that next milestone tonight.

Defecating Publicly On Persistence Of Memory

Yeah, I know. That's a pretty vulgar title, and certainly a number of you are displeased and perhaps confused as to why I'm making that the title to this entry. I rather enjoy the work of Salvador Dali and spent most of college with a poster of "Soft Watch At The Moment of First Explosion" over my desk, but ruining an artistic masterpiece in such a foul manner is pretty much the only way I can accurately describe what the NCAA is apparently planning to do. Reports came out yesterday that Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney believes an expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams is "probable".

The issue will not be determined until the NCAA board gathers to vote on the matter on April 29th, but the thought of altering what, to this point, has been possibly the most intrinsically perfect of American sporting events is wholly unpalatable to just about everyone who watches college basketball, with the exception of coaches and college presidents. And why would they bother expanding the tournament field from 65 to 96 teams? Well, you don't have to be an Ivy Leaguer to figure that one out.

Money. Duh.

This summer the NCAA has the option to opt out and renegotiate its television contract with CBS, and with 30 more games potentially on the docket, that contract becomes a whole lot more valuable. For the coaches perspective, being the skip for a lower-level college team that can now make the dance allows you to burnish your laurels a little more than an NIT berth would, and as for the big program coaches, soft first-round matchups lend the prestige of saying you've made it to the second or third round more often than you used to.

Of course, if these seem like particularly material or vain reasons to expand what is, theoretically, a purely scholastic event about the love of sport, that's because, well, it is. Now I'm not naive. I know this event stopped being about pure competition long ago. Now fortunately, the NCAA is unlikely to pull an Avery Brundage and continue to insist that Division I college sports are all about the love of the game when they clearly aren't. It acknowledges that the bottom line rules here.

And while money is clearly the governing factor, and the likely reason that this will almost certainly happen, it's not ridiculous to express frustration over what will change the greatest weekend in sports. And I'm not the only one who's doing it. The first two rounds of March Madness are a phenomenal show, and every sports fan is so well versed that they can reel off the automatic seed pairings -- 12 vs. 5, 11 vs. 6, 14 vs. 3 -- out of second nature. Two proposals I've read have either the first round expanding to four brackets of 24 teams each or, even worse, the top 32 teams in the country getting a bye to the second round.

The top thirty-two teams!

Hell, we only rank the top 25 during the course of the season. Why should an unranked team with eight losses get a day off? Moreover, if a 16 seed has never beaten a 1 and a 15 has only knocked off a 2 a handful of times, what chance does a 24 seed have of taking out a 1 seed in the opening round? All this does is create dozens of games that will be uncompetitive blowouts or give a day of rest to a team that didn't deserve it. The only upside I could see to this would be if the NCAA decided to share some of the profits with the players of those sacrificial lambs of mid-major schools that are being put out to slaughter, and I'm not the only person to think the idea of paying the athletes has merit. But if you think the NCAA would ever pool money to be distributed among the athletes of its revenue sports, you probably also think expanding this tournament is a good idea in the first place.


What's more, expanding the bracket to 96 teams would cheapen the accomplishment of dancing for smaller schools or throw in bigger programs on off years. I don't need to see this year's UNC freshman-palooza in the tournament, and as an alum of a school that has never made the NCAA Tournament -- and breaks my heart in its failure to reach it year after year -- seeing Northwestern finally break the field because the tourney became more inclusive would feel less like an achievement and more like condescension. I don't want my school's first berth to be gift-wrapped. I want the Wildcats to earn it.

Remarkably enough, Northwestern coach Bill Carmody, who could become a hero in Evanston if the Cats finally get an invite to the ball, is also against expansion.

In the end, fighting the inevitable is pointless, particularly since we will continue watching next year and filling out our brackets like the slaves we are. But perhaps just once, it might be nice if the NCAA listened.

As for the tournament still going on, Saturday's Final Four could be wholly uninteresting if Duke makes its way to a championship, which Vegas has them pegged to do, but I'm still holding out hope that West Virginia can save us from the most reviled school in college basketball winning its first title in nine years.

In other news, another team that went nine years without a championship has officially lost a major part of its history, as the demolition of the original Yankee Stadium is nearly complete. The last parts of the upper deck were torn down yesterday as you can see in pictures here and in the video below.



Color me sentimental, particularly considering I'm a Mets fan, but even I think its odd to see those walls come down. And the one show of the hollowed out old Yankee Stadium next to the new one is just a bizarre site to behold. It still makes me feel strange to know that in just six months, Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium (I) and Giants Stadium will all be figments of my imagination rather than physical structures (On a side note, the NFL announced yesterday that the new Meadowlands Stadium will be opened by a preseason Giants-Jets game on August 16th. The Jets will be home.).

Yankee Stadium is expected to be replaced by parkland that was lost when the new stadium was built, but the idea of taking your kids to use the swings where Babe Ruth honed his craft is at times awesome and at times, well, strange. At least for me. My kids will never understand it.

On a final note, one that is happier than the rest of this post, I'm pleased to announce that Team No. 32 is officially on the docket, and that lucky team is going to be the Atlanta Braves. I've never been to Atlanta and not gone outside of the airport, so I think a stop at the Coca-Cola factory might be necessary, but the big occasion will of course be seeing the Mets visit their division rivals on May 17th and 18th at Turner Field. I don't have tickets yet, but I'm not anticipating that being a problem and my flight is booked.

My college roommate Sam, an Atlanta native, is likely to be among my companions to the ballpark, and upon hearing that I was a Mets fan, his father thanked me for paying for Tom Glavine's retirement. Sam repeated this mantra throughout college.

I wholly expect to hear it again. And I'm awfully excited about it.

Weekend Sports Roundup

Ok, I'm going to level with you. I had a fairly busy weekend and last night in the semifinals of my office fantasy hockey league I suffered the most painful fantasy sports loss of my life, so.....

Yeah, I don't have a story prepared for you.

I know. I know. You're not sure how you're going to procrastinate at work today, but I'm going to ramble a little and perhaps you'll be able to find some solace that way. Maybe. I have a hunch that won't be the case right away since, for me, the most exciting sports moment of the weekend came when I checked my twitter feed at the Brooklyn Brunch Experiment and found that Southampton FC had won the Johnstone's Paint Trophy.

Some of you might recall from my earlier posts that I follow a soccer team in England called Southampton FC, known as the Saints, the result of a sparsely maintained friendship I formed with a Brit named Scott Pestell eight years ago while working as a summer camp counselor. Since I started following the Saints, after an early brush with Premier League prominence -- the club rose as high as fifth in the table of England's top flight -- it has been a rough period for the team. Southampton has been relegated twice in the past eight years, the results of financial constraints, injuries and being put into administration. The Saints did nearly pull back into the Premier League before losing a play-off match to Derby County on PKs a few years ago, but since then it's been nothing but bad news.

Well, the red and white stripes got some good news on Sunday.

No, the Johnstone's Paint Trophy isn't exactly the U.K. equivalent of winning the Super Bowl. In fact, the Wikipedia page for the tournament says it, "is not considered a priority by many clubs, with some opting to field below-strength teams, particularly in the earlier rounds". But it's still the first piece of hardware for the club in 34 years since its triumph over Manchester United (Surely, you've heard of them at least) in the 1976 F.A. Cup Final.

So, while this may not particularly excite you, it certainly excited me. Following this team through the internet for nearly a decade has only reinforced to me that, well, maybe I didn't make the most fortuitous selection in my European soccer clubs. But perhaps with this accomplishment, a push towards promotion to the Championship League and then finally on to the Premier League might be in the cards.

Ok. The section on sports you don't care about is over now. Just be happy I didn't dedicate several paragraphs to Gary Ablett's public declaration that people need to stop bugging him about a potential move to Gold Coast for the AFL's 2011 season.

Now, if you want to hear about something you've heard of before, this NCAA Basketball Tournament thing is starting to wind down to its final stages. Baylor missed out on a golden opportunity to make this the most peculiar and interesting Final Four I've ever seen when it blew a late lead to Duke last night, and with the Final Four now sitting at Butler, Michigan State, West Virginia and Duke -- raise your hand if you had that one -- well, it looks to me like the Blue Devils have pretty much an open path to a championship after they were gifted the weakest region in the bracket.

What this essentially means is that after one of the greatest tournaments ever, we may very well wind up with Kyle Singler and Mike Krzyzewski cutting down the nets next Monday, and that is a conclusion that will be incredibly unsatisfying to just about everyone. With any hope, the Mountaineers of West Virginia can throw Duke off the pace Saturday night and still give us hope of that West Virginia-Butler National Championship Game we've all been hoping for. The only problem I have with this is that West Virginia coach Bob Huggins is, you know, despicable, but at the very least his alma mater, should it triumph, can probably count on having its name spelled correctly on the t-shirts this time.

Of course, if the other established program still alive, Michigan State, should take the title, it will be slightly more palatable because they wear my favorite color and they're not quite as nationally reviled, but as an alum of another Big Ten school I have difficulty cheering for Sparty. I will say, however, that this may have solidified Tom Izzo's reputation as the best basketball coach of his generation -- at all levels. Yes, Phil Jackson is really, really good, but the best player to come through Michigan State in Izzo's tenure that I can think of is Mateen Cleaves, who, unlike Jackson's charges of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant or Scottie Pippen, hasn't exactly made the right kinds of headlines lately. And yet, Izzo, who has a National Championship to his credit, is in his second consecutive Final Four and sixth in the last 12 years. Oh yeah, and he's doing it without his best player.

Mighty impressive indeed.

Lastly, I leave you all on a sentimental note. If you've never seen the movie Slap Shot, you might do well to stop everything you're doing and pop it in immediately. The craziness of Paul Newman and the Hanson Brothers as they play for a minor league team known as the Charlestown Chiefs is a classic bit of cinematic fare for not just hockey fans, but comedy fans alike. The film was an homage to the Johnstown Jets of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which had folded prior to filming, but a new team, named the Chiefs has played there for 20 years after being inspired by the movie. Well, according to ESPN.com, the team, faced with financial troubles yet again, will be moving south.

I've never been to the city, and it always bugs me when some jackass wears a Charlestown Chiefs jersey at NHL games (without fail there is always at least one), but something about this just seems sad to me.

Perhaps I'll mourn the loss by popping it in the DVD player.

1995 NFL Mail Bag: The Detroit Lions

Looking back on it, it's hard for us to remember that there once was a time that the Detroit Lions weren't completely god awful. That time was the 1990s, when Wayne Fontes led something of a renaissance for football in Motown despite everyone thinking he looked like that creepy Italian Restauranteur who was actually selling spaghetti bolognese as a front for the mob.

In fact, however, Fontes was just a football coach, and from the looks of it not too shabby of one either. The Lions would win two NFC Central titles and make the playoffs four times under Fontes, as well as securing two more postseason berths before the decade was out. That's six if you're counting, which means in the 1990s, if you look up postseason participants in a given year the Lions are more likely to be among them than not.

Yeah, this is the same team that went 0-16 two years ago.

I bring this up because it was during this peculiar Barry Sanders-driven renaissance that I sent a letter to the Lions and received a response, according to the postmark, on March 21, 1995. Fontes was still in charge, Barry Sanders was a six-time Pro Bowler and GM was still solvent and financially independent. It was a good time for the Motor City.

It was so good that you'd think the Honolulu Blue and Silver could have sent me more than three pieces of paper and a poster, but all in all, considering what other teams sent me this was actually a pretty decent take. It's one of my favorites actually and I'll give you the two reasons why.

For starters, like every team the Lions sent me the requisite "thanks for writing letter" and I'm always intrigued by what the letterhead will look like. Not only is the letterhead for the Lions in color, but you'll notice the awesome graphic in the upper left corner. Yeah, that's the Lions logo from 1961-69. I totally dig it, and I love that they still use it. Either that or they have an absurdly large amount of leftover stationary from the 1960s.

Among other goodies included was a single sheet of paper detailing the history of the Detroit Lions, which apparently could be summed up in about 600 words. I've noticed that quite a few teams, and I think all of the ones in the NFC North have included something like this, a clear sign that they hadn't updated most of their distributed press materials for modern technology yet -- though my memory on 1995 is spacey; photocopiers may have been the height of modernization for all I know.

The paper ends with Detroit's loss in the 1991 NFC Championship Game against the eventual Super Bowl Champion Redskins, and yes, it is still hard to imagine the Lions in a Conference Championship Game, but looking back on it and knowing that three seasons passed between that "history" of the Lions being written and me receiving the mail, I find it hard to believe they felt they could ignore the two playoff berths and the divisional title they won in that period.

Something tells me they cling to those a little more strongly now.

Like every team, mail is a golden opportunity to make money and the Lions certainly weren't too good to beg for your change. To wit, they included a list of players I could purchase 8x10 black and white glossy photos of if I so chose. Some names are memorable and make sense: Sanders, Chris Spielman, Herman Moore, hell even Brett Perriman seems a reasonable purchase choice. But I found it odd that other selections you could buy (for just $5!) included Dave Krieg, a journeyman quarterback whose actually fairly impressive career accomplishments are overshadowed by the fact that he fumbled more than anyone else in NFL history at the time he retired. Given that other names among the top five in NFL fumbles are Warren Moon, Brett Favre and John Elway, maybe its not such bad company to keep.

Most peculiar on this list of potential player purchases to me, however, was Lomas Brown, whom I most vividly remember for saying the words, "I'm so proud to be a New York Giant" following Big Blue's win in the 2000 NFC Championship Game when he was on New York's offensive line. This prompted two questions from me, namely A) Lomas Brown was on the Lions? and B) Who on Earth would want a glossy photo print of Lomas Brown?

I could also purchase a glossy photo of starting quarterback Scott Mitchell, but why would I want to do that when the Lions already gave me this totally fucking sweet poster of him? This is the second reason I love the package the Lions sent me and it might be my favorite item that I've received from any team. Period.

Why?

It is a hilariously awful and kitschy product that represents the essence of 1990s football marketing. Much along the lines of the ad Bill Parcells did for Apex in my Patriots mail, this poster of Mitchell, who was both a perfectly good and yet eminently forgettable player echoes to a bygone era when Starter actually produced paraphernalia for NFL teams. And it was available at J.C. Penny. Not only is the sideline merchandise he's modeling in the lower left corner a heartwarming reminder of watching football as a child but perhaps most importantly, look at that hair.

Seriously, look at how awesome that is.

Lastly, and this is one of the most amazing parts of the poster, while playing an NFL Game, it really looks like he's wearing, yup, you guessed it, Reebok Pumps. Come on, you remember Pumps, right?

What this package contained was not only a decent amount of swag but about three dozen cheerful reminders of watching football in my childhood. Aside from a few laughs, a walk down football memory lane is really about the best I can hope for while sifting through these.

In the case of the Lions, even if they can no longer do it on the field, at least in my heart this was an unmitigated success. Reading through all of it was just the right thing to cheer me up after I realized that I slept through all of Geelong's season opening win over Essendon this morning. Don't worry, ESPN360.com lets you watch replays of it. I speculate that I slept through it because I was just too exhausted by last night's phenomenal Kansas State-Xavier Sweet Sixteen game.

And so, because of this, I thank the Lions for getting my day started properly. If this didn't excite you, dear reader, perhaps learning about tonight's Sabres-Senators match will, though I'm skeptical.

If neither of those do the trick, well, I'm sure you'll all find some way to survive. It is Friday after all. Have a good weekend, everyone.

18 Hours Until Geelong's First Bounce

I preface this entry with the warning that 99% will probably not care at all about most of what I write about. Don't worry, there's some basketball later. But sometimes you have to do some things for yourself. You know, artistically. So here we go.

Perhaps one of the biggest highlights of my recent jaunt to Israel was a chance encounter with a group of Australian teenagers at our hostel in Jerusalem. No, not that kind of chance encounter. This was a collection of 18-year-old men who hailed from Sydney, and what made the meeting so exciting for me is that it provided a rare opportunity to talk football.

Not this kind of football, or this kind of football. And, uh, certainly not this kind of football.

I'm talking about footy, AFL, Aussie Rules. This kind of football.

I've made mention before of my affection for the Geelong Cats, and I always enjoy the rare chances to talk shop with a native Aussie or any other AFL fan. I'm far from an expert on the game, but in a year or so I've picked up my fair amount of history, and in this case, given that I had just had one of my rare opportunities to use a computer 15 minutes earlier, I actually had the upperhand knowing Western Bulldogs had knocked off St. Kilda in the final of the NAB Cup, a preseason NIT of sorts for the AFL.

Happy to deliver the news we riffed about Gary Ablett and Leo Barry, names that you surely have never heard of before, and both of us compared our own joy over sportsfandom triumphs, in my case Super Bowl XLII, in his Sydney's nail-biting win over West Coast in the 2005 Grand Final, ending a 72-year title drought for the Swannies.


My favorite moment probably came when he asked me if Tom Brady was a huge celebrity in America. I suppose I would have sounded just as silly if I queried about the Australian popularity of Nick Riewoldt.

It wasn't all positive. Sydney has dealt Geelong a heartbreak or two, including one particularly brutal loss in the 2005 Qualifying Final, when the mercurial Nick Davis scored four unanswered goals in the final quarter. But I chose not to bring it up because a) I wasn't watching footy yet when that happened, and b) I was having too much fun just talking footy at all.

I mention this because, as I'm sure you all know, Geelong opens its 2010 campaign tomorrow at the bright and early hour of 4:40 a.m. ET against the Essendon Bombers. Now, surely I would be crazy to wake up early enough to watch this showdown at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, but I never claimed to be sane, and I will be in front of the computer with my navy and white hoops on. If anyone wants to come over to watch the excitement, let me know. There will be beer. And chips.

Surely you're all wondering how you can watch tomorrow. While AFL was dropped from its contract with the premium channel Setanta Sports a year ago, ESPN360.com, or as it will be known next month, ESPN3.com, is showing several live matches every weekend, while ESPN2 will have a few live matches throughout the summer, as well as a live broadcast of the 2010 Grand Final on September 25th.



My Cats are defending champions, as some of you may recall, after topping St. Kilda in a thrilling Grand Final last fall. They're coming off their second premiership in three years and third straight appearance in the AFL's championship match, but there are many issues the team is sorting through as the season begins. For starters, tomorrow's game will be the 200th in the Geelong career of Joel Corey, a man responsible for one of the biggest plays in Geelong history as you can see above. Other topics concern whether or not the young Tom Hawkins is due to break out and become a start, how the team will manage in its first year without captain Tom Harley, who retired this offseason and the always tense saga of whether or not Ablett, last year's Brownlow Medalist and considered by many to be the best in the game, will leave Geelong for a lucrative offer with upstart Gold Coast, which begins play as the AFL's 17th franchise next year. The potential distraction, as well as the aging roster even has some of the Cats players thinking this will be their last chance before the window of opportunity closes to take another title.

So basically, yeah, there's a lot to talk about. Get excited. If you can't be bothered to watch online, your first chance to see footy on ESPN2 comes in 15 weeks when Geelong faces Hawthorn, who no doubt will be looking for revenge after essentially getting knocked out of the playoff race by the Cats a season ago when Geelong overcame a 35-point deficit to knock off the Hawks.

Get excited.

Oh yeah, basketball. That NCAA Tournament thing starts again today, and while I will be watching, I'll mostly be rooting for Cornell to knock off Kentucky, thereby ensuring that none of my Final Four teams make it to the Elite Eight and clinching my worst bracket ever. To be honest, at this point I'm far more interested with seeing if the Nets can win one more game (they defeated the Kings last night) to stave off the sole position as the worst team in NBA history. I feel that if Kentucky does, in fact lose to Cornell today, John Calipari, who ironically never had a team this bad when he coached the Nets, will probably take it with more grace than Nets CEO Brett Yormark.

Say what you will about how mismanaged the Knicks were under Isiah Thomas, and don't get me wrong, they were about as mismanaged as a professional sports franchise can be, but at least Bert and I weren't given no guff when we donned our own paper bags a few years ago. With your team chasing the title of "Not the worst team of all time" perhaps it might be wise to avoid an acrimonious relationship with your fan base. After all, you never know when they'll start protesting that you have a job.

Stay Classy, New Jersey.

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.