Baseball Is Here, College Hoops Is Gone, And Other News

It is a big week in sports and I have been pretty lax in writing anything, so here's what I would have written about if I had not been busy watching baseball all the time.

This just in: Lance Armstrong passed a doping-test on his hair, urine and blood but the French think he cheated. You'd think that by now they'd be used to losing and would take it better than this. Though Armstrong won on French soil seven times and there are only 30-40 countries that can say the same thing.

Also hot off the presses: According to the New York Daily News, 23-year-old Olympic legend Michael Phelps was spotted drinking alcohol and dancing with his girlfriend at a bar in New York City. So that's "news" now-a-days.

Of the 20 starters on the Final Four teams in the NCAA Tournament, there was one freshman, one sophomore, eight juniors and 10 seniors. Is it a coincidence that the last four teams standing were some of the most experienced? That's why having seniors, particularly a senior point guard, is on my Rules to Picking the Tourney (that I have not actually made yet).

I did not pick North Carolina because Roy Williams lied to me through my television about Ty Lawson's toe, but in retrospect, has there ever been a more obvious pick to win it all? They're like an all-star team with a USC-football-like draft class. That said, Carolina has 17 guys on their roster. 8-9 played regularly and all of them will be gone next year. By my count, they will lose 12 guys to graduation or the draft. Williams had better be the recruiter everyone says he is or Kansas' mediocre post-championship run this year after losing their stars will look like a dream come true in Carolina.

During a broadcast of the Mets first ever game at Citi Field (preseason against Boston last Saturday), the announcers kept calling the park "Shea." So at one point Gary Cohen said that they should pledge $10 for every time they inadvertently call it "Shea." Then at the end of the year they will donate it all to charity, and Keith Hernandez broke in after Cohen suggested this and said, "no, let's all go out to dinner!" Now having typed that, it isn't very funny and makes Hernandez seem like a bum, but it was funny as hell at the time. In related news, I am calling the park "New Shea" and there is not a damned thing anyone can do about it.

New Shea does not look like home to me. It was hard to watch the game and know this was in the Mets' stadium, even though everything looked like all the other new stadiums. I miss the barred-off boxes in the lower bowl when foul balls go into the stands. The place is spectacular, but it isn't home. This is gonna take a while.

Pete Carroll, who is apparently incapable of referring to himself in the singular, has recently come out wildly supporting his former USC quarterback Mark Sanchez. Carroll now says Sanchez is a great QB, a great guy, he'll make a great pro, and he gives him his highest recommendation. This is what a coach should do for one of his kids, but the problem is that when Sanchez announced he was leaving USC, Carroll acted like a 5-year-old (which is on par with his typical behavior). So how does Carroll explain the change from, "he's not ready and we think it is a mistake that he's leaving, so now we am going to storm off stage and make him face the media alone," to "Mark's number 1! Mark's number 1!"? Carroll actually said, "We were testing his resolve." Screw you Pete Carroll, and as much as I love my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, screw all things-USC because of you (and by "you," I mean the singular "you," not the plural. As in "You are an ass", not "You are asses").

Plaxico Burress is mercifully gone from the Giants. He'll soon be a Bengal since they only sign felons (enter Tank Johnson). And in case you missed it, Burress actually shot himself in the leg when he went to a nightclub with a handgun tucked into his sweatpants' waistband. The gun slipped down his pants, Burress reached for it, and hit the trigger. Why sweats at a club? Why a gun in a bar? Why a gun at all? How sweatpants were expected to keep the gun up? Why was there no safety on? Why did he not have a permit? How this incident is protected by the Constitution? Your answers are as good as mine. Good riddance.

Gary Sheffield is a Met. Apparently there was not a high enough asshole quotient on the team. If that's the case, success! I do keep hearing that Sheff is actually a good guy and his teammates always like him but he is just bad at breakups (he's left all seven of his teams in ugly ways, including, of course, calling Joe Torre a racist after leaving the Yanks). My only experience with him was when he was a Dodger, he used to put his batting gloves in his back pocket in such a way that the middle finger stuck up. An accident? 9 straight innings, his batted glove flipped off his own home crowd at a game I went to and sat in the bleachers for. And yes, he did use that glove when he batted and then replaced it purposefully. And I noticed it at multiple games. Strange sense of humor or huge a-hole? You make the call. I haven't decided if I will boo him when I see the Mets play this year. Probably will. (Update: Sheffield struck out, taking five straight fastballs in his first at bat as a Met, to lead off the ninth with the top of the lineup coming up behind him, trailing by 2...one more vote in the "boo him" column.)

Hal Steinbrenner said last week that he thought the Yankees' tickets may be a little overpriced. Guess what, you're the boss. Lower them. I think he is exaggerating though. $2625 for a single ticket to a single game that includes food but not alcohol doesn't seem high to me. So what that your average ticket price nearly doubled this year ($41.40 to $72.97). So what that your average price is $22 higher than the next highest team, twice what the Mets charge across town, and triple the league average ($26.24). So what that the standardized "Fan Cost Index" says that a night at the ballpark for a family of four at Yankee stadium is $410.88. So what that a Pabst Blue Ribbon costs $9 and foreign beers cost the GNP of the countries they come from. As Steinbrenner said, it is the Yankees and people expect to pay a little more for the best (or third best, based on last year's AL East Standings). And they can always get the cheap seats for $5...and only have a partial view because they are set behind a restaurant that blocks nearly 1/3 of the field.

Baseball is back of course and the Mets cannot be stopped. (Update: apparently they can be.) Frankie Rodriguez has two saves and Aaron Heilman and Scott Shoenweis are far, far away. Does being 2-0 matter with 160 games remaining? No. Am I getting ready to buy my Mets-Dodgers first round playoff tickets? Yes.

It is Masters Week, so you can't go 5 minutes without hearing about Tiger Woods. And while I do think he is a brat and I don't really like him, I am glad I am around right now to watch him. That dude was told his ACL was torn and his leg was broken and he obviously couldn't play the U.S. Open. So he replied that he was going to win the U.S. Open and then take 8 months off to get back in time for the Masters. And he did. Best competitor ever? I'd take him or Lance in a heartbeat on that one. Also, check out this video of Vijay Singh skipping a shot across a pond at the Masters Par 3 competition on Wednesday...and getting a hole-in-one.

Update: Courtney Paris said that if Oklahoma did not win the national championship in women's hoops, she'd return her scholarship worth $64,000. Apparently in the month since then, she hit the all-you-can-eat cafeteria pretty hard to make sure she'd get her money's worth and wound up getting run into the ground in her Final Four game. The only question now is if she, statistically one of the best players in women's college history, or Tyler Hansbrough, statistically one of the best players in men's college history, will have a shorter pro career.

Finally, Mythbusters had perhaps their best episode of all time last night: "Demolition Derby Special." During the course of the show, they wrecked a bus, two semis, a trailer, a pickup truck, and 10 cars, including dropping one from a helicopter at 3000 feet, dropping three from the highest crane in California, and crashing a rocket-powered sled into one at the speed of sound. Is the science in this show questionable much of the time? Yes. Do I care? Absolutely not.

Michigan St. Spartans Set To End Recession, Cure Cancer

I am not sure if everyone has heard about this or not, but apparently there is some sort of economic problem hitting Michigan, specifically the city of Detroit. It is all I have heard over the past week or so on ESPN and sports talk radio. Apparently the economy there is in the dumps and Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the Union, but the Michigan State Spartan men's basketball team is carrying the hopes of the entire state on their shoulders. I sure hope this economic mess doesn't spread to the rest of the country, or even the world!

The fact that thousands of other colleges and universities around the country are not fighting for a national championship should be of no concern to their fans, because only the fans in Detroit have actually been negatively affected by this apparent state-wide recession.

And on a less serious note, we should all be rooting for Michigan State because the city of Detroit had to suffer through that historical 0-16 Lions team this last year. Sure, in the last 15 years Michigan State's basketball team has a title, the Red Wings have four Stanley Cups (including last year), the Pistons have an NBA title, and sure that is more major sports titles than 90% of other towns during that span, but the Lions are bad and these are good, hard-working, flag-waving-Americans and they deserve more.

Sure since the turn of the millennium Detroit has hosted a Major League Baseball All-Star game, a Super Bowl, a Ryder Cup, four NBA and NHL Finals series, and now an NCAA Final Four. But we should all get behind these Spartans because this is a cursed sports town that never gets to see anything great happen. Plus, North Carolina only has the fourth worst unemployment rate in the country, so those people are spoiled economically as well as in terms of sports (the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup a few years back and the Panthers have a really good wide receiver). And on top of it all, now Gary Sheffield is gone. Is there no bottom to this hole?

Fox radio hosts Isaac Lowenkron and Pooh Richardson made a good point during the MSU-UConn game on Saturday. As Pooh said, this Michigan State team is just like the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team, and their win over Connecticut was just like the Miracle on Ice over the Russians. Lowenkron agreed, saying that all of us Americans across the country should feel a little better about our own situations because that pesky 2-seed went into their home gym and knocked off a 1-seed! I know I feel better about getting laid off last year and having a part-time job now! Thanks AP-ranked #8 school, for showing me that anything is possible...even you beating the #5 ranked school! Oh Miracle of all Miracles!

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In reality, I am rooting for Michigan State tonight because I am annoyed that Tyler Hansbrough apparently cannot close his mouth and I am a Duke fan anyway. Plus Tom Izzo seems like a good guy and I'd like to see him win it all again. And Roy Williams already seems like kindof a smug little guy anyway; he doesn't need another title to add to it. And let's face it, neither of them is helping or hurting my bracket at this point. But can we all give it a rest about how hard the city of Detroit has had it and how this win will make it all better? 1 in 5 people in that city is unemployed and no new industries are popping up to help out...how much is this game going to help or hurt? And as I mentioned, it is not as though it is these poor kids in unmatched uniforms vs. a 1998 Silicon Valley little league All-Star team, flying in on a team jet with their trainers, P.R. staffs, and entourages in tow. North Carolina has been hit extraordinarily hard by this recession as well...do those people not deserve a little joy?

Put the game in its proper perspective and enjoy it that way. Despite all the money, and all the lights, and all the cameras, and all the scouts, and all the agents, and all the boosters, and all the talk, it is still just 20 kids playing for a trophy for their schools.

At Least I Get To Enjoy The Final Four With No Money On The Line

I haven't checked the message board on the Tourney pool in which I am now assured of losing to my wife and 5-year-old nephew, because I already know what it likely says. And while I am fully aware that what I am about to write is just a smokescreen for the deep, possibly unquenchable shame for my placement in this bracket contest, I feel I deserve some of the credit for my bride having three of the Final Four and both Finals teams left. It seems I am better at giving advice than listening to it myself.

I had planned on doing it this year, and perhaps I still will, but I did not actually compile and write out my rules for picking the NCAA Tournament. Certainly "Never pick Gonzaga" is up there. "Always pick Syracuse to win at least one game further than their seed." "Rely on teams with power over teams that rely on speed and shooting." "No center, no Sweet 16." "Pick at least one win for each senior starter on a power conference team, and senior point guards are worth two."

But there are some new rules I am considering now as well: "Never think a toe injury will actually cause any problems." "Seriously, never pick Gonzaga." "Pick straight chalk at least to the Sweet 16 and stick with the 1-seeds at least to the Elite 8." "Never pick the 'How could they have gotten in; the selection committee is corrupt'-team to lose in the first round." "Any coach who has won a National Championship is worth at least one win that that team should not have won."

The following is a rundown of the questions my wife asks when making her picks. She does this for every game and always in this order. I include this because perhaps there are nuggets of genius buried in it for you to use in your picks next year.

First she will go by the seeds. Unless it is a 6-11 game or closer, she won't even look at an upset. She also has a fair knowledge of who the really good teams are, so this isn't just blind picking on seeds.

Next she determines if she knows anyone who went to either school, if she's ever been to that campus or state, and which is a more desirable vacation spot. Ex-boyfriend went to school in Missouri? Sorry Mizzou...it's an early exit for you. Not interested in going to Minnesota? Good night, Gophers!

If either school has an odd name, or if she'd never heard of them before, that will make her lean heavily the other way, but is not a deal-breaker. Except Farleigh Dickinson, which would probably do it.

Next she will ask if either school is a private school. She will always go with private schools over public schools if she can't otherwise decide. Catholic schools are tops among private schools, of course.

If she still has not made her pick, she will go with the mascots. Cougars trump all mascots because of Ricky Bobby yelling "How can I control my emotions? There's a cougar in the car!" in Talladega Nights. Other than that I am not clear on if she picks which mascot she likes better, which is less weird (sorry Zips, Tide, Governors, Banana Slugs, Anteaters, Blue Hens, Vandals, Golden Flashes...), or which would kill the other in a fight to the death.

And if even the examination of the mascots proves inconclusive, she goes with colors. I am pretty sure the hierarchy here goes blue-red-yellow-green-other, but I am not positive.

And if that still doesn't work, she just goes with my pick. Luckily for her, she did not do that much after the Sweet 16.

I Wish I Could Pick The Tourney Like An 8-Year-Old Girl.

I am currently sitting in last place in two bracket pools against friends, family (including my 4-8-year-old niece and nephews) and my wife. Sure, someone has to be in last place, but considering my profession involves me knowing something about sports, let's just say this is lower than I'd like to be placed.

I am confident that I will beat my nephews though because they already lost their Champs in USC and UCLA (apparently my brother and brother-in-law haven't explained that you can't just bet on your favorite team regardless of logic or odds). My niece could be trouble though. She has Louisville and Pitt with me in common, but she has UConn and UNC while I have Memphis and the Zags. She actually picked straight chalk all the way, except UCLA to the Elite 8, upsetting Duke and Nova (I had that pick too, actually).

If Connecticut goes further than Louisville, I will lose to my wife as well and that will probably not go well around my home and with my friends. So seriously, for the good of my marriage, root for Louisville and Gonzaga to beat UConn and Oklahoma. If the scenario from the video game photo above plays out, I am screwed.

I can still win the whole thing as I have six of my Elite Eight alive and all Final Four teams. As a runner, I always counted on my finishing kick to overwhelm people and kinda disregarded the starts of races (all driven by adrenaline anyway). So that's my plan in the tourney...pick some upsets early and then chalk late. Besides Gonzaga. I broke my #1 rule of Tourney Picking (Don't ever pick Gonzaga), and have them beating Carolina and The Blake Griffins.

Speaking of Griffin, is it possible that Donald Sterling had some sort of four year plan to get Al Thornton, Baron Davis, Eric Gordon and Blake Griffin on the court together?

If there is one thing that this Tourney has taught me so far, it is that the Midwest blows. I had that as my upset-bracket. I had BC beating USC and upsetting Michigan State. I had West Virginia beating Dayton, upsetting Kansas and beating BC to the Elite 8. And what happened? The 10, 11, 12, and 13 seeds all win in the first round, destroying my whole bracket.

And then what did all of those darlings do in the second round to follow up their masterful upset performances of Thursday and Friday? 10-USC played well but lost. 11-Dayton scored 43 points and got crushed. 12-Arizona wound up being the only Pac-10 team to advance to the S16. 13-Cleveland State scored 57 and got crushed. And in the East, the other upset that screwed me, 12-Wisconsin came back and scored 49 points and got crushed in the second round. Thanks a lot jerks. The least you could have done is win one more game and screw everyone else too.

My nominee for the moment of the first two rounds was the at the end of the Missouri-Marquette game on Sunday. In a tie game with 5.5 second left, the star player gets fouled in the act and gets two free throws. But he is injured and cannot shoot, so they get to bring in a shooter from the bench. Before you start shouting that this was a soccer-type cheap move, the injured kid is a 76% shooter, so I don't think it was gamesmanship. So who is the new shooter? A freshman playing for the first time all night. No warm up. No rhythm. The kid knocks down both shots without touching the rim. Ballgame.

Too bad Derek Jeter isn't that cool under pressure (seriously, what's he ever done?). I almost cheered for him last night at the WBC semifinals but when he airmailed an inning-ending throw to first and the Japanese went on to put the game out of reach, Jeter, Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino, Brian McCann and basically everyone on the U.S. team but David Wright and J.J. Putz, returned to the list of guys I hate.

Fantastic Sports Names List, Vol. I

During the NCAA Tournament, we are introduced to players, mascots and sometimes even schools that we have never heard of before. This is a list of the some of my personal favorite unusal names, interesting modifications and combinations, and creative spellings of names we're all familiar with. Not all are people in the Tourney, and are just others I have noticed during my years following sports.

They are listed in alphabetical order, with my personal favorites in italics.

Alderius Anfernee Carmello D’Angelo DeAngelo DaJuan Damier Da'Sean Dashawn DeAndre De'Jon Dejuan DeMar Demarre Demetric Demonte Derwin Dionte Doneal D'Qwell Dwyane E'Twaun Gartrell JaJuan Jamarcus Jamon J'Cory Jhavid J'Nathan Jrue Keyshawn Knoshawn Kore LaDainian Lamarcus Laron LeKendric LeSean L'Ron Markell Roburt Santonio Santwon Shonn Steffphon Tajuan Tremaine Trumaine Tyreke Tywain

Clearly I am partial to the ones where it is a completely made up word or when a random letter is thrown in front of an otherwise ordinary name.

The wife and I have long been considering names for our kids and some of the leaders at this point are V'Scott, Firlamdinian, Trapezius, L'Corduroy and of course Seven, as a nod to George Costanza.

Did I miss any of your favorites? Comment below.

Stick To Calling Play-By-Play And Leave The Jokes To The Professionals, Kevin Harlan

Now fully embroiled in the NCAA Tournament, it is a little hard to focus on anything else in the world of sports. I got tickets to the see the Team USA in the World Baseball Classic semifinals on Sunday and finals on Monday, but of course my first thought was, "which tourney games will I miss?"

Without delving too deeply into all the things I noticed and wrote down to write about in yesterday's March Madness games, there are a few key ones, with the Kevin Harlan story being the punctuation mark on this one:

It was nice to not have the threat of hearing Billy Raftery hanging over my head all day. Or Brent Musberger, for that matter. Raftery will be in Dayton today, which is where Musberger was on Tuesday for the Play-In game. When I first saw that game on ESPN, my first thought was that it was a pretty sloppy for a big time high school game. Then I realized that it was an NCAA Tournament game and I couldn't figure out which was more horrible to have to sit through: Musberger trying to figure out how to work "Buckeeeeeeyes" into his call of the game, with Steve Lavin just kinda being confused the whole time, the staggeringly bad play from Alabama State and Morehead State, or the nearly vertical angle from which you have to watch the games from in Dayton. Do they film from the moon there? It's like a sports-themed Rogaine commercial.

Do we really need a play-in game? Is there good justification to have the two worst teams in the field play against each other. Imagine this: UConn and Carolina beat their 16-seeds by a combined 4000 points yesterday, and those 16-seeds were better than Moreheads State, who plays Louisville today. Adding the 65th team is a waste of time. Does the 7th or 8th best team from the Pac-10, ACC, Big East, or Big Televen really deserve an at-large bid to the Dance?

During commercial breaks on Thursday, I was switching to ESPN's Tourney coverage which was funny. They aren't allowed to show game footage because the games were still live and that's a TV contract standard. So they just sat there and talked about the games. It was like watching a radio show. But I did see on their ticker that Bobby Bowden had a great quote about the NCAA's ruling to erase wins from many Florida State sports over the last few years because of a massive cheating scandal that the school did nothing about. They announced that Bowden had come forward to defend the Athletic Dept. like it is a surprise...he's gonna lose 14 wins and now be way too far behind Paterno to ever catch up. Anyway, Bowden's quote was, "It's like killing a flee with a hammer." Actually, it is like handing down a measured penalty against an athletic department for having no institutional control. Which is like hitting a nail with a hammer, I guess.

The first game of the day showed why we love this Tournament. How many people in Kansas City had probably ever heard of Cal State Northridge before yesterday? I'd say the 100 Northridge fans in attendance plus 10, tops. But the entire crowd galvanized and was roaring for CSUN as their upset bid against Memphis progressed. Villanova was the rare big-conference school to be in upset-danger, but still have the crowd on their side.

During the lull between games, ESPN did a Major League Baseball bracket and had some of the Baseball Tonight guys pick a baseball bracket. Peter Gammons said, and no one batted an eye, that the Dodgers have the best offense in the National League. What? Who? There's Manny, and a few guys who used to be pretty good, and some guys that are supposed to be pretty good, and Dodger Stadium, which does not exactly help a mediocre hitter become a great one. Am I this biased against the Dodgers or is this as insane as I think it is? Furcal, Hudson, Loney, Manny, Ethier, Blake, Kemp, Martin - it is a good line-up for sure. But considering that they will be pitched to by pitchers who are leading all the time because the Dodgers forgot to hire any pitchers, and considering that there are three, maybe four, potential .300 hitters and four, maybe five, potential .225 hitters, this is not a daunting line-up to me. Everyone is waiting for these young Dodger phenoms to take over. After two average years in the Bigs, when do you stop waiting and and start looking for their replacements?

A big thank you goes out to Jeremy Pargo for his dunk and that thug from Morgan State that supluxxed Blake Griffin or there would have been utterly no highlights from Thursday. See the :40 mark of this video for the Griffin play and watch this one of the Pargo play. Sorry if those links get taken down...both are probably breaking copyright laws.

Later today I will post a list of my favorite first names from sports. I have been recording the greatest and most oddly spelled names in sports for a while and have determined that about 15-30 years ago, people naming their kids were really, really stupid. Or at least they had very high opinions of themselves and wanted their kids to have names that no one had ever had before. Like Steffphon, Jrue or D'Qwell.

And finally, Kevin Harlan was telling the story of how "Humpty" Hitchens got his nickname as a child. He loved the song "The Humpty Dance" by Digital Underground (and who didn't besides my parents?). So Harlan went on to say , "That [song] brings back memories of my wedding night." Now I don't think I need to explain what the "humpty dance" is a euphemism for. So after Harlan just went on national television talking about having sex with his wife on their wedding night, he quickly tried to backpedal it down to a clumsy joke about that being his and his wife's first dance song. The damage was done. That poor bastard should probably also be called "Humpty" now. "This is Humpty Harlan and Dan Bonner with you here in Portland for tonight's second round match up between the 4th seeded Gonzaga Bulldogs and the Cinderella Hilltoppers from Western Kentucky." There should be a list of really embarrassing things said by sports announcers, and if I can find some other really good ones, there probably will be next week.

Bubbles Burst But BCS Still Blows More

I suppose that the bubble teams looking for a bit of a blessing from above in order to get them into the NCAA Tournament should have had a sense that it wasn't in the stars considering that selection Sunday was on the ides of March. I mean, look how well it worked out for Julius Caesar. Actually, that may have been the world's first March Madness, with Brutus and Octavius as 1-seeds on one side of the bracket, and Marc Antony and Cassius on the other side. Of course Antony won it all and got to hook up with one of the cheerleaders (Cleopatra).

San Diego State and St. Mary's were probably the two teams that didn't make the Dance that had the best resumes, but they're from California, so they should have known they were gonna get hosed. If they were both from North Carolina, they'd both be in. But while we do get screwed on respect and national coverage out here in California, we also get the benefit of getting to watch all the games we want. That Syracuse-UConn game last week ended at 1:30 A.M. in New York City on a Thursday. How many people east of the Rockies probably saw the end? I did. Then I watched a 30 Rock and went to bed early. Then I woke up the next morning and put shorts on because it wasn't snowing. So maybe living in California is not so bad.

After all, there were not many places in the U.S. this weekend where Phil Mickelson could have suffered from heat exhaustion after a round of March golf. Side note: Phil, maybe mix in a salad every now and then.

College basketball is plagued by some of the same B.S. that made it so that the NCAA does not actually have a champion in football (Florida is the "BCS Champion" while Kansas is the "NCAA Champion" like in every other sport in all three divisions but Division I football). Why did St. Mary's or SDSU not get in? Because traditional power Arizona has an historical Tourney-appearance streak going. Actually speaking of streaks, did you know that U of A has lost 5 of 6 down the stretch?

The selection committee likes to say that they don't look at conferences, they reward teams for tough schedules, and they look at the whole season, not the last few weeks. In order to get games against good teams, small schools are forced to go on the road (like Gonzaga does or Fresno State in football). So St. Mary's went on the road a lot this year. They won 13 road games on the way to a 26-6 season (without their Olympic team leading, All-American, Player-of-the-Year candidate point guard for much of the year). Their RPI was 48 and they're 33rd in the final regular season AP rankings released the day after the selections. Arizona was 19-13 with an RPI of 65 and was not among the top 40 in the new AP rankings. 13 losses? If St. Mary's played Arizona right now at Arizona, SMC would likely be favored by 5 or more. Isn't the job of the selection committee to pick the next best 34 teams? And if they don't look at conferences, why is it that the "Power Conferences" happened to get 30 of those 34 spots, while all the teams complaining that they were left out in the cold unfairly are in "non-Power Conferences?"

Clearly the answer is for the selection committee to not be given information as to what the schools or conferences are (since they allegedly don't look at it anyway). Give them the entire resume with no names. Don't tip it off that School A was in the Pac-10 by revealing their opponents...just give the scores and the RPI of the opponent. Let the numbers decide.

All that said, was St. Mary's or SDSU really going to compete for the National Title? Is the end result going to be tainted because the 30th or 40th best team in the country got left out? Of course not, and that is why the BCS is a joke. Fans and writers will complain about certain teams getting screwed no matter what the system, no matter how many teams qualify for the playoffs. But with basketball we complain and complain and then no one doubts the legitimacy of the Champion. In football, there is no possible way that we will ever accept that there weren't one or two or five schools that should have had a shot at it, year in and year out. They can keep claiming that they have the best regular season in sports (debatable). Because when it comes down to it, they have the worst post-season and isn't that what matters?

Looking for a tourney pool to join? http://scottbergen.blogspot.com/2009/03/play-this-ncaa-tourney-bracket.html

The Ultimate Power Rankings, March 10

Every sports site and channel seems to publish a constant stream of power rankings (I am guilty considering I have a weekly California Division I college basketball power ranking on CBS2.com), so I have decided to add the Ultimate Power Rankings here occasionally. This week's top 10 are as follows, in no particular order, and there are only 9:

Oklahoma Women's Basketball player Courtney Paris took the microphone at Senior Night and declared that if the Sooners do not win the national championship this season, she will return her scholarship to the university. It has been reported that this is worth about $64,000. My head is spinning with follow up comments on this one: "Suck on that, Jim Calhoun!" $64,000 for room, board, books, fees and meals at OU? How much does this girl eat (a lot, by the way)? Oklahoma lost by 30 to the undefeated Connecticut early in the season, so I hope Paris has a good job lined up after graduation (does the WNBA even pay $64,000 year?).

Gonzaga led the WCC men's final game against St. Mary's 1-0 with 20 minutes to go in the first half. How? Apparently a St. Mary's player dunked a ball in warm up and was assessed a technical foul and the Zags made the shot before the tip-off. Imagine if St. Mary's had lost by 1. Fortunately they doused that fire early and went out and lost by 100 (approximately).

Dwyane Wade is pretty good, whether he knows how to spell "Dwayne" properly or not. Monday's finish was one of the great endings to an NBA game in a long, long time, and it was one of three buzzer beating 3-three pointers for Wade in this game alone! How good is that LeBron vs. Wade second round series going to be?

There is nothing better than blind homer announcers. On AM710 yesterday (ESPN radio in L.A.), they had three local NBA "experts" talking about the Lakers and Andrew Bynum's return. One guy said that having him get hurt and not return till the playoffs have already begun is a blessing in disguise because he will have to come back and play with the second team until he shows he is ready to start (if ever). So this guy said that this is all a good thing because of what a boon he'll be to the Lakers' second team. Now that is how you find some silver lining.

My ultimate frisbee team, Slow Children at Play, won the L.A. Winter league title this weekend after last year going 0-the season, including being beaten 15-0 in one game. But that's not the best part. In the final game, we were down 14-7 (game to 15, win by 2) and we came back to win 18-16 in easily the most dramatic sporting event I have ever been a part of. I kid you not, people rushed the field.

I absolutely love all of the "bubble watch" conjecture that is all over everywhere right now. This is funny because of how much I can't stand mock drafts, which are essentially the same thing. I think the difference is that the NCAA tourney talk starts in earnest about two weeks before selection Sunday and by that time the guesses are fairly accurate and informed. While the mock drafts will start 4-5 months before, when the guesses are like a monkey throwing poo at a draft board and then measuring which players got more crap on their faces.

The Netherlands beat the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic despite having Sidney Ponson as their only Major League star, with the term "star" used extraordinarily loosely. The Dominican team has 23 Major Leaguers. That's a 2008-sized upset and perhaps the first really good one of 2009. They play a rematch-elimination game against one another today. Best of all, the Netherlands dropped Andruw Jones from their team since the last WBC. How far have you fallen if the Netherlands would rather not have you on their team and you are a former Major League Baseball Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year and 10-time consecutive Gold Glove winner?

March Madness is here. Yesterday I watched five college basketball games, four of which were tournament finals with the winners going to the Big Dance. Today around 10 a.m. when I first went to check on who was playing today and when, there were already two conference tournament games underway. Spectacular.

The New York Jets were supposedly a team that "needed" to sign Terrell Owens. And when you consider that they haven't won a Super Bowl in 40 years, maybe the risk of a little controversy in the clubhouse would be worth signing a top-line talent. After all, they did dump their franchise quarterback and send him off to a division rival in order to sign Brett Favre just a year ago, so they're not afraid of making a splash. But despite decades of losing and frustration and embarrassment, a Jets official came out last week and said, "What message are we sending to the team if it signed Owens?” That's how big of an a-hole Terrell Owens is. After allowing star receiver Laveranues Coles to leave via free agency, essentially they said they'd rather not have any wide receivers than have have T.O. on their team. How can you not love the Jets after this?