March 14, 2004 – all of America sees
the results of the NCAA selection show and begins to fill
out brackets. Every one of us is excited, thinking, “This
is the year! My picks are great! There’s no way I don’t win
the office pool this time!” March 18, 2004 – UTEP scares UMD,
BYU scares Syracuse, Manhattan beats Florida. By day’s end,
only Nevada and Manhattan have beaten higher seeds, and everyone
in America is fine with that, because they had Florida and
Michigan St losing in the next round anyway. March 19, 2004
– By day’s end, the higher seeds are 29-3 and no one is panicking
because the Sweet 16 still looks good. After all, your Final
Four of Kentucky, Pitt, Duke and UConn still looks great.

And then it all goes to hell. But hey,
what are you going to do? It’s not your year to win the office
pool. In fact, it’s never your year. That’s just a simple
fact of life. Like most of you, I made my picks based on head-to-head
records, conference play, quality of best player, strength
of schedule, etc. My fiancée made her picks based on which
team’s mascot would win a fight and whether or not she knew
someone at the school. The result? Well, after Syracuse bounced
Maryland (which I picked) neither of us is going to win, but
I’m so far behind her in points that I couldn’t catch up if
the rest of my bracket is correct. So what’s the lesson to
be learned? It’s very simple – winning your bracket is all
about luck. I mean seriously, make a case for me why you would
have picked UAB to reach the Sweet Sixteen? Why would you
even pick them to beat Washington, one of the hottest teams
coming into the tournament? After blowing out the whole of
the SEC, why not take Kentucky in round 2? It just doesn’t
make any sense.

Now, I’ll bet there are a few of you
reading this saying “well, I picked all four 8-9 games, knew
that Nevada was going to beat Gonzaga, had UAB, had Alabama
beating Stanford and knew that Vandy would knock off NC State.”
Well, good for you. I’m sure that you also knew Friday’s winning
lottery number, that Warren Sapp would sign with the Raiders,
and of course that Andy Richter was on the 8th floor this
morning. No one picks the tournament with perfection based
on knowledge. It just doesn’t happen. For example, all of
you who had DePaul and Cincinnati in the first round were
correct, but you were only correct due to blown calls by the
refs. If not for an obviously blown call at the end of the
first OT in the DePaul/Dayton game and one with less than
40 seconds to go in the Cincy/ETSU game, we’d have seen a
13 beat a 4 and a second 10 beat a 7. Had Luis Flores been
allowed to land after taking off for lay-ups then Manhattan
would have knocked off Wake Forest and moved on to face St.
Joes. So remember this lesson for next year – if you’re not
normally lucky, then you’re just screwed.

Ok, enough of the depressing part of
the column. On to happy news. While we stay with the theme
of crashing down, the Vet is no more! That horrid, evil place
of hell for most teams that is home to some of the most rabid
and most devoid of class fans in all of sports is no more.
We all know the horror stories. We remember the snowballs.
We remember the batteries. We remember them booing Mike Schmidt
even though he was their hero. We remember booing Michael
Irvin as he was carted off the field unable to move. I myself
twice wore opposing teams jerseys into the vet. The first
time was as a Bears fan, where I was over-shadowed by a guy
10 rows in front of me with a Butkus jersey and a beer helmet
who played a great heel. The second time was as a Cubs fan
where I heard nothing because the Phils were just trying to
not finish in last in their division. Both times I listened
to Philly fans boo their own teams whenever they did something
wrong. I don’t know how Lincoln Financial and Citizen’s Bank
will be, but I know they can’t be worse. Good riddance to
the Vet.

Well, it’s a short column this week,
but there’s just not that much to cover. We’re still stuck
in spring training, there’s nothing to say about the upsets
in the tourney because we have them every year, I’m still
completely opposed to the NBA allowing teams under .500 from
the East to make the playoffs and I’m still confused as to
how the Tampa Bay Lightning are bucking for home ice in the
NHL. It’s all just confusing me. So for now, I’m going to
stop, collect my thoughts, and bring you something funnier
next week. Until then…

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