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.

When Buses Get In The Way

If you went to Northwestern, and I'm guessing since this is mostly read by my friends then the proportion is higher than usual, you might have noticed that the Wildcats got bounced in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament today by No. 1 Ohio State. What you might not have noticed is that Northwestern had a lead in the final minute that it let slip away before falling in overtime. Not only could this have been the single greatest moment of Northwestern's rather thin basketball history, but it also would have kept the highly faint hopes NU had of reaching the NCAA Tournament for the first time, hopes that it would seem rested solely on claiming the Big Ten's automatic bid by winning the conference tournament.

The Wildcats are likely to get an NIT bid, but that seems small consolation for coming so close to knocking off the No. 1 team in the country, a feat that just might have invigorated what has been a steadily improving but nonetheless fledgling program. What makes the loss all the more frustrating, however, is that this is second time this season Northwestern has taken the No. 1-ranked Buckeyes to the final minute with a chance to pull off the monumental upset. It feels like something greater than the season at large has been lost when two narrow chances to make a bold statement to the world of college basketball both slip through the Wildcats' fingers.

What was most frustrating for me, however, was that being a dedicated alum and a Northwestern fan, you'd think there was no chance I'd miss what could be the greatest moment in the lackluster history of NU basketball. And you'd be wrong. For you see at the exact moment Northwestern had shockingly taken the lead in the waning moments this afternoon, I was somewhere in northern Maryland on a bus bound for D.C. where I will be seeing the Blackhawks and Capitals Sunday afternoon.

This presented a number of issues.

I was hoping to follow the game on my laptop using ESPN3.com, which I have remote streaming set up for. However, when you're on a bus internet can be, diplomatically speaking, "shitty". In the case of the M31 Megabus from New York to Washington D.C. on March 11, 2011, it was utterly nonexistent.

I spent most of the game following on my phone and on twitter, refusing to believe that my Wildcats would actually make a game of it, let alone take the lead late in the game. Then I glanced at my phone and saw it was a one-point game in the second half.

It was time to break out the big guns. I got out of my seat, rifled through my luggage and pulled out my laptop in hopes of connecting to the bus's mobile internet. Connect I did.

And then: Nothing.

Apparently being connected to the internet isn't the same thing as actually getting to use the internet, and despite the comments of the young man next to me that on his bus to New York earlier this week he was able to watch the Big East tournament, I wasn't able to so much as load my homepage. Though when I consider that he also told me Rocky IV was the best of the series, perhaps he wasn't the man to trust.

Either way, the inevitable outcome was clear. I was not going to get to watch the magic or lack thereof happen in live streaming video. Instead I had to resort to painstakingly reloading the score on my iPhone's ESPN app, where I saw that not only did Northwestern let its late lead slip away, but the Wildcats got beat up in overtime in what eventually would be a season-ending 67-61 defeat. Sometimes it just isn't meant to be.

And sometimes you aren't meant to see it, regardless of what it is.

Luckily, the whole reason I'm here is to see the Blackhawks and Capitals this Sunday and cross team No. 39 off the list. While there are still some questions as to whom, exactly, will be seeing the game with me, I do know that at least I'll be there in person. I will actually witness that game.

And no bus is going to stop me.