March Madness

Ah, March.

I live for this time of the year. Some the greatest sporting moments you’ll ever know are created, and I get to participate in one of coolest, quirkiest and most fun office pools in the land …

Each year, we can count on one of my editors, Dave, to organize the pool and have a bracket on each of our desks the morning after the selection show. The entry fee is always an economical $2, and almost anyone and anything is eligible to enter. We welcome everyone in our office, plus family, friends, even pets -- although, to date, no pet has won the pool. (In past years, I’ve entered our hermit crabs, but the last of them died off last year. This year I wanted to enter my brother’s dog, but he never replied to my email. I’ll have to get a pet by next year …) Some of my cohorts, with all their kids and pets, turn in six, seven, eight brackets.

After each round, Dave distributes newsletter-like updates that celebrate entrants who correctly picked the upsets and chastise those doing poorly, along with other interesting facts and figures. And the winner always receives the traveling Dick Vitale trophy -- an action figure with a cutout of Dick Vitale’s face attached …

So my mom, the basketball-watching queen she is, has entered the pool for the third year. In fact, we watched the selection show together on Sunday night, and she had her bracket filled out and turned over within 10 minutes …

I should’ve filled in my bracket on Sunday night, too. The analysis and my picks were fresh in my mind. But I put it off, got sidetracked by work and other things this week, and suddenly I was cramming to turn in a decent bracket by 11 a.m. this morning …

And somehow it was a lot tougher this year than I’d remembered of years past. The standouts are clear -- North Carolina, Georgetown, Texas, Ohio State, UCLA, Kansas, Wisconsin and Florida -- even though I think half of those teams are sorely overrated (They’re ranked as high as they are partly because the rest of the field isn’t as competitive as years past … hello, Duke? And the lack of a Connecticut or Syracuse?)

I needed some help to figure out some of the other matchups and try picking the upsets -- Old Dominion/Butler, Maryland/Davidson, Louisville/Stanford, Nevada/Creighton … So I turned to the experts on CBS Sportsline and ESPN for some comparison. I couldn’t believe so many of the so-called experts had picked Davidson over Maryland … and Stanford over Louisville!? Seriously!? I did lean with them, however, on Old Dominion beating Butler and Nevada beating Creighton …

And eventually I began penning in my Final Four: Florida, UCLA, North Carolina and Texas A&M. There you have it … Kansas, Ohio State and even Florida, are three of those teams I think are sorely overrated. Heck, I looooooooove my Jayhawks and I‘ll be one of the happiest guys in this world if they win it all, but they’ve written the book on choking in the tournament. See last year -- not to mention the countless big leads they’ve blown this season, and I rest my case. Ohio State: They’ve got One Man Oden and it’s only a matter of time before somebody finds a way to shut him down (I say it’s going to be Bruce Pearl and Tennessee). And Florida, well, it’s hard enough to repeat, but they’ll get into the Final Four thanks to playing in an easy region …

I did get my bracket in on time, and even made a quick call to Mom to get her pick for the tie-breaker (How many points will Alando Tucker score?)

… And at 11, the TVs were turned on. For lunch, a few of us hit Charcoal Grill and managed to catch the ends of the Maryland/Davidson game (Maryland won, proving a surprising number of experts -- not me -- who picked Davidson wrong) and Texas Tech’s heartbreaking (for my bracket at least) loss in the closing minutes …But as the afternoon went on, most of the higher seeds were winning handily. And when the games started again at 6, the Marquette/Michigan State game -- as I’d predicted -- got out of hand in a hurry with the Spartans taking it …

Ah, but here’s another reason to love living between two major media markets. While the Milwaukee affiliate was dead-set on showing its hometown team -- even while they were getting crushed -- the Chicago station was showing the type of game we’d been waiting to see all day …

The kind of game that was close all the way through. The kind of game that had you nearly breathless at the end. No. 6 Duke vs. No. 11 Virginia Commonwealth … Now, for me, this was one of the games in my bracket that was a no-brainer. Duke hasn’t completed the job all year long. They’re young, inexperienced. And at times I wondered if they deserved to be in the tournament. So without much thinking, I stuck Virginia in the next round …

And I was right. Never have I cheered so hard against Duke (that cocky point guard Greg Paulus and the couple times he tried to instigate a fight with Maynor only made it easier to root against the Blue Devils) ... Duke tied the game at 77 with an easy layup and 10 second left, but VCU’s Eric Maynor dribbled down the court, unfazed, pulled up and swished the winning bucket with barely a second on the clock. It was beautiful. And I let out one of my signature jump-so-high-you-hit-your-head-on-the-ceiling-and-shout-so-loud-you-nearly-blow-off-the-roof cheers.

Ah, March.