March 18th...March Madness..Here We go

Well it is that time of year. A smorgasbord of college basketball. College Basketball being that rare event in which the prelude to the end may be better than the end. While some great games occur at the end of the tournament these two days and to some extent Saturday and Sunday when 48 games take place in 4 days and those dedicated to doing so can see almost all of the games is a time that cannot be matched.

I suspect by now that we have all done our brackets. In our house we follow the one bracket per person rule disavowing the new practice of filling out multiple brackets. The next time I hear someone say in response to an upset " I had that in one of my brackets" is one time too many. This is much like a weatherman saying the next day that in one of his forecasts he predicted rain. You either pick a team or you do not. In our house we have my oldest son who follows the game more than any of us, my 12 year old who knows the major teams but does not have a wide knowledge, my wife who just knows we love the Irish and the " smart schools" like Duke and Vandy. It is a shame by the way that Northwestern could not get in,,,we had hopes early. My 10 year old daughter who knows enough to know more than most just by hearing what is going on in the house and knows that we always root for Duke. And me. We all did our brackets independently, and yet in the end my wife and I ended up with Duke and Kansas with Kansas winning, my middle son has Kansas over Syracuse, my elder as Syracuse over West Virginia and me..well I have Kansas over West Virginia. So 4 out of 5 take Kansas and the one with the most knowledge takes Syracuse. We shall see.

It is a wonderful event, I love it. I do not see the need for 96 teams however, despite feeling that Mississippi St and Illinois should have made it do we really need 32 more teams so the 6th and 7th best teams in the SEC and Big 10 can get in. If you are the sixth best team in your conference and you make it you are lucky, but if you do not you are not snubbed. You blew it,,win more games. Lets keep it at 64. That is my vote anyway.