March Madness

Ahhh, I love this time of year. Although working 65 hours a week really puts a damper on all the basketball, but I still find time to enjoy the greatest 3 weeks in sports. There really is nothing like the NCAA college basketball tournament. Many of my most memorable sports viewing moments revolve around this tourney. I remember where I was when Bryce Drew hit his 3 to knock off Ole Miss in 1998. Or Tyus Edney going the length of the court in 4 seconds to lift UCLA. Of course the greatest college basketball play of all time...Laetner's shot. How about the Hoosiers run to the title game in 2002? A few blogs ago I mentioned that I would write about my best sportsfan memory moment. I'm not gonna do it here, but it'll be in a future posting. It definitely involves March Madness. Back to the posting...

The pairings were announced tonight and you can be sure that my postings over the next 3-4 weeks will revolve around this tourney. Of course my predictions, bracket, expert analysis, and commentary will be provided...I may even consider doing some sort of running blog for one of the sessions if I can find the time.

My initial reaction to the brackets is that Butler was fairly seeded as a #8/9 (unfortunately). Now, unfortunately they have to play the SEC regular season champion (LSU) and then their reward for winning is getting to play North Carolina in Greensboro....good luck. I had lunch w/ Joe G (Butler's radio play-by-play analyst) this past Friday and that was his worst fear realized....an #8/9 seed in Greensboro playing North Carolina in Round 2 if the Dawgs are fortunate to get out of Round 1.

Sometime before the games begin on Thursday, I'll be sure to make my bracket public for all my readers to see. Note, i said "bracket"....not "brackets." One of my biggest pet peeves are people who fill out 23 brackets and then get all excited that one of them by some miracle from the heavens ends up being somewhat accurate. Fill out one bracket and go w/ it!! I'm sure there will be more on this as the tourney progresses.

Alright, last week sucked in general, except for the fact that Ted gave me two tickets to the Big 10 Tourney friday night. Unfortunately the games weren't that competitive. Work was a little testy as it always is the week before the March 15th corporate deadline. This week should be much better as the deadline has passed and I can take a little breather before the April 15th deadline starts to creep up. Also, I have next Saturday off...it's been 7 weeks since i've had a Sataurday off, so i'm looking forward to that.

Good luck to a few of my friends that are heading to Vegas this week for the games...wish I could be there w/ ya.

Oh, one last thing. GAMBLING!!! Yeah, the Tourney provides 4,367,320 different ways for me to gamble on the games. Although I typically don't bet on college sports, i make an exception for the NCAA Tourney as well as the college FB Bowl Games. Front and center is my head-to-head battle w/ Diddy. We pick every single game versus the spread, rotating picks. We do this before each round begins. Unfortunately he's taken me behind the woodshed the past two years, so I'm looking for a little revenge this year.

Let the Madness Begin!

Video of the week - here ya go - Dave and I were shocked as we had a great view of this play. Apparently he had done it before

2008 Taxable Income Reviewed to Date - $16,233,849