DESCENDING INTO MARCH MADNESS

It's finally here!!!

The 2006 NCAA tournament starts this Thursday! I'm not going to mince words here: this is my favorite sporting event of the year, the only one for which I happily burn a personal day to properly enjoy. And with my alma mater Villanova University earning one of the four coveted #1 seeds, it should be an extra special, and emotionally draining, hoops hullabaloo. The 'Cats play in the early afternoon on NCAA First Round Friday, which also coincides with St. Patrick's Day this year--in other words, it's going to be a long day, and a long weekend as they scrap and claw to make it to the Sweet Sixteen. My friends and family probably won't want to talk to me until this thing is over.

You may have heard about 'Nova guard Allan Ray's eye injury in their Big East Tourney loss to Pitt on Saturday. But as painful as it is to read about (Coach Jay Wright says "the knuckle got underneath his eye"--yeeouch!), you really need to see the eye-popping injury for yourself, right here! Someone said that white thing you see is his eyelid folding back, others say it's his eyeball coming out of the socket. Either way, it hurts just looking at it. But he apparently suffered no corneal damage and he's cleared to play without needing goggles. Yikes.

Whenever this tourney comes around, it seems everyone has some bone to pick with the NCAA, from Bryant Gumbel bitching about the money the big conferences get, to every "analyst" with a pulse is steaming over who got picked and who got overlooked. I even purposely timed it so I was in the car during the CBS Selection Show, because it's turned into a drawn out circus of a show, with excruciating "live reaction shots" a-plenty. I heard Jim Nantz jumped out of his pants when he heard the Missouri Valley Conference got as many teams as the ACC (4), Clark Kellogg picked all four #1 seeds to make the Final Four (has he ever seen the tourney before?) and that Billy Packer may have been drunk, as he talked about the Arizona-Wisconsin matchup . . . which they hadn't announced yet. Oops. Of course, I was stuck listening to Mike Francesser and the Angry Puppy on the radio (who was livid about Hofstra's omission--oh, please), so I didn't escape unscathed. Screw them all, I'm not letting them shit on my parade.

Deadspin, bless their little souls, has done a cracking bang-up job with their NCAA Tournament "Pants Party" previews of the matchups, with an army of writers giving facts about the schools that you can't get anywhere else, like:
* Iona's 94 year old trainer J.B. Buono, who claims to have had sex with Hitler's main squeeze Eva Braun;
* UCLA is only 3-4 against teams with "S" or "H" in their names (21-2 otherwise, meaning they certainly don't want to face Memphis or Kansas);
* The Wichita State Shockers mascot, WuShock, is a shock of wheat, and is not affiliated in anyway with the "three finger shocker".

And folks, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Deadspin even has their own printable bracket (pick J.J Redick!), and a Deadspin Pants Party ESPN bracket group (which I joined) with group names like "On A Mission From God Shammgod", "Bilas Loves Length", "Candygram for Mongo" and "Allan Ray's Good Eye". God bless Deadspin, I don't know how I lived without them.

At the other end of the spectrum, ESPN has become an embarrassment in a myriad of ways, and this holds true with the NCAA tournament too. This is probably because they can't show the games anymore (CBS spent over $6 BILLION for the rights through 2011), but they're out of touch, and reduced to sitting on their hands watching CBS just like everyone else. The best they could do on Selection Sunday is to fly Dick Vitale from the Big 10 Tournament to the ESPN studio two hours later to get his insight. Well, it appears his insight didn't make the flight, as it appeared that he didn't even have time to read the brackets on the way (he kept asking where Cincinnati was--uhm, they didn't make it). Also, ESPN Bracketologist Joe Lunardi needs to find another job after stinking up the joint this year (they even removed the link to this page). For some reason, he also had sub-par St. Joseph's as a bubble team--oh, and he just happens to be the assistant vice president for university communications there! Conflict of interest anyone?

As for the brackets, I still hate the "city" names for the four regions (Atlanta, Oakland, Washington DC, Minneapolis), so I'm renaming them Ron Mexico, Black Hole, The District, and the Mall Of America regions. Thankfully, they're going back to the old school names next year. But overall, I think it's a pretty good looking field, and I would watch out for Iowa, UConn, and LSU. And don't count out Ohio State, UNC, and of course, Villanova. V for Villanova, V for Victory!!!

At least, that's what I'm hoping.