If you’ve been keeping up with me on Twitter, many of you (including Karl Rove) have, you’re aware of my passion for college basketball tournaments. I spent last weekend flying down to the ACC tournament each day, making sure I returned to Raleigh each night to go to Felson’s. Last Saturday at Felson’s was epic by the way, it was just like the old days. By 12:30am it was “one in one out” and there were only a few gel heads present. I didn’t mind that they were there because I could tell they were insecure about being outnumbered 20 to 1, having to spend their own money on drinks, and looking like total tools because girls refused to acknowledge them. I really feel like we are starting to take back the Felson’s, good work. The tournament was entertaining as usual, despite the fact that I had to fly first class with a bunch of potential terrorists sitting behind me because Dad said using the jet would make us “look bad” since we’re in a “recession”.
I don’t think that Dad appreciated the comments I made to ACC commissioner John Swofford when we were sitting in the VIP box with him, but someone needed to tell him that the ACC expansion (that actually began in 1991 with Florida State) was equivalent to letting poor kids run wild on a shopping spree through Cameron Village. The kids get all excited upon seeing the boutiques and high-end retailers but their hopes and dreams of owning necessary items such as a Gore-Tex mountain climbing jacket from Great Outdoor Provision Co. quickly crumble when they realize they can’t afford to spend $450 on a coat they will only wear to protect themselves from the vicious Raleigh weather. Back to the library kids, everything’s free there. I know that’s a stretch, but it makes sense. Florida State gets all the way to the title game, only to have one of the schools from the “Big Four” destroy their hopes and dreams of winning an ACC tournament title. Back to Florida kids, everything sucks there. I could tell that Swoff didn’t exactly follow my analogy, but that’s probably because I had been drinking heavily and was starting to slur my words at that point. Also, I don’t think that he was listening to me at all.
I’m sure you’ve noticed another sure sign that it’s March; yes, I’m talking about the increase in making decisions using NCAA tournament style brackets. Every single radio station, local news station, newspaper, and magazine comes up with something crazy for us fans to decide on each year using the bracket format. I love following along with each and every one of these contests and I’m sure you’ll agree that deciding whether “Anchorman” would beat out “Balls of Fury” in the first round of this year’s “Best Comedy Movie Tournament” is just as entertaining as the actual basketball tournament itself. Having the local news analyze these completely worthless brackets, as if they were significant, really makes it so these redundant gimmicks never get old, year after year after year after year. I’m thinking about doing an ITB version, but I can’t think of a place or topic that hasn’t already established itself as the “Best of” whatever category it falls into.
While I love the fact that the NCAA tournament decides a winner by using brackets, I do have one major problem with the selection committee. They think that letting smaller shitty schools from conferences no one has ever heard of play in the tournament is a good idea. A 16 seed is never going to beat a 1 seed, in the same way that ITB guys don’t take home girls from Garner after getting blackout. All the “analysts” call for expansion of the tournament field. I’m calling for the exclusion of all these poor schools that have to spend the entire amount of money that their conference receives from them making the NCAA tournament just to travel to play in one game, lose, cry about it, then fly home. Thinking these commoner schools can compete against wealthier schools from real conferences is a joke.
My NCAA bracket is still available for those that have $1,000 and want to enter. I don’t care that the first day’s games are over, just give me $1,000 next time I see you. This isn’t a Ponzi scheme and no, Bernie Madoff isn’t running the pool this year. I told him I’d run it for him since he’s busy having his bad ass lawyers get him out of trouble for all the ”terrible things” he did to ”thousands” of organizations and individuals.
I’m so glad BernDog isn’t running the brackets this year- he won every time! And whenever I asked him to show me his bracket after the tournament was over, he just sent me an email to ESPN’s completed bracket. No wonder he is rich as hell, he could predict the future!