constant crises

this is THE best sporting day of the year. super bowl is for the sports non-fans. march madness is for the people who actually care. i think i summed it up best in 2003 when i wrote in this xanga entry on march 17, 2004:

IT'S CHRISTMAS! back when i was a kid, my birthday was my favorite day of the year. it helped that christmas was always the next day (imagine that) and i always felt special that my birthday arrived just hours before everyone's favorite holiday. over the years though, as christmas started losing some of its luster, and i realized i'd never get to actually celebrate my birthday with friends, my birthday started moving to the backseat. and that's ok, i understand christmas eve is supposed to be about family. *shrug*. but anyway, i realized today that, for the past 8 or 9 years, tomorrow has been my favorite day of the year. no, not march 18th, dumbass. i'm talking about the first thursday of the ncaa men's basketball tournament. just about every year, i wake up in a moment of sheer excitement, realizing basketball will be on all day. i'll usually jump out of bed like it's christmas, sit around in my pj's like it's christmas, eat like it's thanksgiving, jump around like it's my birthday, and generally just act like it's a giant national holiday. see, i'm the kind of crazy fuck who gets excited about Soutern Illinois vs. Alabama not only because it's a great matchup in the ncaa tournament, but because Southern Illinois is playing Alabama. i'd get excited about that game in december. i'd get excited about that game if it was 7pm on a tuesday in january. i'd get excited about that game because a missouri valley conference team gets to run-n-gun against the big boys of the southeastern conference. the fact that it's an 8-9 matchup in the greatest of athletic postseasons makes it all the better. so what am i going to be doing tomorrow? i'm gonna get up and walk over to turn my take-home final. then i'm gonna rush back for the first game at 9:20am. then i'm gonna sit. and watch. and want to pick up my phone to yell at somebody about how utep is taking it to maryland. and i'll realize nobody cares THIS much about it. which is fine. it's a little like my birthday i suppose. i share it with a few people who know how i feel across the world. it's still my favorite day of the year. : )

as every year, here's the bracket for everyone to laugh at: one of the great pieces of fun in picking a bracket is trying to find an upset that nobody else likes. i've done the analysis and, as you can see, i've picked Iona (13) over LSU (4). personally, i think all my indicators of a possible upset are there: LSU -- hyped team from an overrated conference. 1-4 record against ranked teams. inexperienced squad with freshmen and sophomores leading them. questionable defense. heavy reliance on the post game and frontcourt. turnover-prone. Iona -- small, scrappy small-conference squad. senior-laden club. guard-oriented. high-scoring backcourt. one star player. of course, the other beauty of picking upsets this large is that no one can ever get on your case about going out on such a limb :). march is really here. let the games begin.

tags: sports, march madness