I gonna take my ball and go home

I used to list this time of year as my favorite in all of the sports calender. There is so much fun stuff going on in every sport. In the NHL and NBA players start growing their playoff beards, in baseball players are through with their spring training hold-outs and sign multi-million dollar extensions to play a child's game, and best of all the commercials for "a tradition unlike any other" appear during CBS' coverage of march madness. March Madness that beautiful free-for-65 run of basketball coverage that realizes so many hopes and dashes so many dreams. As the game clock goes into slow motion and a desperation shot is hoisted, sports bars around the country draw silent for 8/10ths of a second before erupting with cheers of joy (and a round of shots) or the sobs of "alumni" garishly decked out in their schools colors (a round of shots to drown the sorrows). But wait the next game starts in 20 minutes...

Lately my joy has been tampered by the over abundance of free brackets and "your shot at march madness". I didn't mind when the bracket thing was a simply $5 pool that people did in their office or a the bar, you would see people with a crumpled piece of paper marking down results as the game ended and the next began laughing with friends "What was I thinking, everyone knows Syracuse chokes in odd years". Now it has become a multi-billion dollar industry, another American get rich quick scam. Every website offers cash and prizes for a your bracket and hell, you can join multiple times on most of them. The casual fan who can't tell you what state Gonzaga is in, how many teams are nicknamed Rebels, how to correctly spell Kryzewski these days will have a couple of brackets going and when the inevitable question goes up at a bar "Did you have that 5-12 upset?" it is now met with "Well in one of my brackets I did, but that is the one where I have UCLA in the Final Four"...

I am not saying I am better than these people. Being the fantasy sports gambling addict that I am, I have in the past had as many as 13 brackets going with more than $50 paid into the kitty. I have completed brackets on Disney's website before. I am a junkie. I used to fill out brackets on the women's tournament as well as the NIT. I can say that two years ago my bracket was #1 in the world going into the Final Four, I finished #1000+ which got me nothing.
I am the type of guy who does watch college basketball anyways, but I also "scout" college basketball for tourney time. But what good does my immense knowledge of teams, players, coaches and game trivia when betty over there made her picks based on team mascots and who would win in a fight? Com'on if a catamount got in a fight with a tarheel, Vermont better beat Carolina... and don't get me started about the jaspers vs the governors.

as usual I am not offering solutions here, the Mellow Mushroom offered a bracket to dining customer this year with a $10,000 grand prize and also local prizes... what is this world coming to... I was hoping that this economic down turn might curb corporate dollars for something as unpredictable and pure as the college athletics, but maybe I'll have to wait til next year for that one.

oh yeah Gonzaga is in Spokane, Washington. There are two Rebels (UNLV's Running Rebels, and my Ole Miss rebels.) And Krzyzewski is spelled with two 'z's a 'y' and a silent 'j'