Do people still care about Tiger Wo... zzzzzzzzzzz

Be honest: do you care about Tiger Woods or are you just watching for the jokes? It's OK to tell the truth. It's funny, right? All of it. Especially the part where he has to talk to the media about his whatever it is he feels sorry for getting caught at.

But really, is there anything more boring than Tiger Woods and the media coverage of whatever it is the story is at this point?

There are plenty of people to feel sorry for in the Tiger saga, and they mostly are the folks in the media that have to cover it as if it matters. Imagine having to waste precious lean tissue and brain matter in order to come up with something cogent to say about Tiger Woods. Watching the media coverage of Tiger the last day or two is like something come up by Jon Stewart or seen on Monty Python. The funny part is that the folks coming up with the bits and stories are being serious. They’re actually doing that stuff earnestly and without irony.

That’s hilarious!

I saw the transcript of Tiger’s interviews with ESPN and the Golf Channel, but figured Beavis & Butthead episodes on YouTube or maybe a Steven Seagall movie might be more intellectually stimulating.

Oh, but it’s not like there wasn’t anything interesting at all to come out of the Tiger interview roll out. Not at all. In fact, it came out that PR maven Ari Fleischer quit as the puppet master because, as FoxSports reports Fleischer “fell on his sword because he felt he was becoming the story.”

“Fleischer’s legacy, whether fairly or not, remains propagating Bush/Cheney myths — like Saddam Hussein attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001 — which Americans don’t want to hear. Having him in behind the curtain gave the impression Woods had something to hide, and that words were being fed to him.”

So there’s that. Still, the timing of it all should come as no surprise. Tiger trotted out there on a Sunday after a weekend where the NCAA Tournament produced more crazy upsets than any first two rounds ever. In fact, Ivy League champ Cornell became the first team from its conference to win two games in the tourney since Penn went to the Final Four in 1979.[1] In fact, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, this very well might be the wackiest tournament since the 1986 NCAA Tournament where No. 7 Navy—with underclassman David Robinson—beat No. 2 Syracuse at the Carrier Dome before facing No. 14 Cleveland State in the Round of 16. That was the year No. 11 LSU got to the Final Four and freshman Pervis Ellison helped Louisville beat up No. 1 Duke in the championship game.

Good times.

Of course Tiger went out there at about the same time Congress was “debating” the historical passage of the health-care reform bill, too. That conjures up the up the biggest question of all:

Who cares about Tiger Woods? And if anyone cares about Tiger Woods, why?

Seriously, Tiger Woods plays golf. That’s it. Sure, he makes a lot of money and has charities and all of that stuff, but when it’s broken down to its essence, he is a golfer. That’s it. I never heard any stories where Tiger Woods rushed into a burning building to rescue some kids. No, he's not Spider-Man. He hits a little white ball, chases it down and then hits it again.

He also plays a sport in which a 60-year-old man (Tom Watson) came a centimeter away from winning the most-storied of all golf tournaments just last summer. It’s a sport where Phil Mickleson and John Daly can lumber and giggle around the course and win majors. Hey, I love golf as much as the next guy. I love playing it and watching it, but let’s be serious here. It’s golf. It ain’t cool.

At all.

Name another sport in which a 60-year-old man can beat the best in the world.

Why do we care about Tiger Woods again?

---

[1] Interestingly, Penn had to win four games as the No. 9 seed to get to the Final Four in 1979 (before getting destroyed by Magic Johnson and Michigan State). The Quakers knocked off No. 8 Iona, coached by Jim Valvano with Jeff Ruland in the low post, before slipping past No. 1 North Carolina. UNC had four future NBA players, which set the table for a victory over No. 4 Syracuse and No. 10 St. John’s. That’s right… Penn beat a 10-seed to get to the Final Four and tore through an ACC plus two Big East teams to get there. Cornell has the A-10 and Big Ten in its book. Is the SEC next?

Pigs fly, hell freezes over and the Ivy League wins in the tourney

It was the damndest thing watching the Ivy League champsCornell eviscerate Temple in the first-round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday in Jacksonville, Fla. It was almost as if the Cornell team morphed into the college basketball version of the Harlem Globetrotters where every shot they tossed into the air from beyond the three-point arc splashed through the nets.

The crazy thing about Cornell’s 13-point victory was that Temple shot nearly 52 percent from the floor, committed just two turnovers in the second half and still never really had a chance. No, Temple wasn’t as bad as the scoreboard indicated, Cornell was just that good.

Great shooting, as they say, can cure a lot of ills. In that regard Cornell wasn’t quite like Villanova against Georgetown, but they were pretty darned good.

The significance of Cornell’s win in the first round goes a little deeper than simply sending poor Temple and its 29-win season packing to give coach Fran Dunphy a 1-12 record in the first round of the tourney, though those are nothing to sneeze at.

No, the significant part about Cornell beating Temple was that an Ivy League team actually won a game in the NCAA Tournament. That’s a bigger deal than one would believe.

For the past three years I had been harping on the notion that Ivy League teams should forego a bid in the NCAA Tournament and sign on for the NIT, or, if academics are the true priority at those schools, call it a season.

Though there have been plenty of so-called “upsets” in the first round of the tourney this year, Cornell beating No. 5 Temple is the only real “Cinderella” of the bunch. Oh sure, the NCAA likes to paint its basketball tournament as the most egalitarian of college sports championships, and for that organization it’s as close to a truth as we’ll ever get. That means it’s almost true, but not really.

Sure, the selection committee lines up all the teams based on some sort of secret formula and allows them to settle it on the court. In that sense the NCAA Tournament is cool, and, of course, it generates those ubiquitous brackets that used to infiltrate every office copier this time of year before such things as copier machines and paper became anachronisms. Now, every so-called “bracket challenge” or whichever cliché gets tossed around like the equally cliché office hoops know-it-all with multiple brackets in all of the pools, is online.

The Internet, believe it or not, turned the NCAA Tournament bracket into cultural wallpaper.

Nevertheless, every year at this time the NCAA, CBS and its corporate sponsors trot out the notion of the mythical Cinderella turning up at the last minute to be the babe of the ball and steal the show. CBS touts upsets and defines its coverage with a dizzying array of highlights and cut-ins at venues around the country in order to capture the faux notion that something in line with Chaminade knocking off No. 1 ranked Virginia in a tiny gym near the beach in Oahu. Instead, these “upsets” come from teams that play in the so-called “mid-major” conferences.

You know… the conferences the tournament selection committee looks down on because they don’t make it as much money as the teams from the Big East or ACC.

Typically, these mid major teams run out of upsets by the second weekend of the tournament. That's when the big basketball factories reclaim the tournament and follow the proper path assigned them by the selection committee. After all, CBS wants ratings for its tournament and knows that the alums and fans from Duke, Kentucky and Kansas tune in at numbers than the handful of folks that follow the basketball program at Ohio U. or Butler.

But occasionally a team like George Mason breaks through to the Final Four, which isn't as surprising as it sounds. Sure, George Mason plays in the Colonial Athletic Association, which slips through the cracks of the coverage bestowed on the big conferences, but the CAA isn't exactly chucking the ball into the stands every time they touch it. They can play some basketball, believe it or not.

For one thing, painting George Mason and teams of its ilk as mighty little underdogs fighting against the monoliths is wrong. The mid-majors are not a David in the battle against Goliath, nor is it a mom-and-pop shop slaying Wal-Mart before it gets crushed and the organic nature of a downtown is destroyed. Actually, the mid-majors are just that — mid, majors. They are like the regional chain with shops across the region that takes a chunk out of Wal-Mart's market share. Sure, more people shop at Wal-Mart or Target or Starbucks, but that isn’t putting Giant or Acme out of business.

Still, there are true underdogs in the NCAA Tournament except for the Ivy Leagues. But if you think Cornell has a shot to get to the Final Four or past the round the Round of 16, just put that thought out of your head right now. It’s not going to happen.

There, I said it.

What's the point of having those teams in the “Big Dance” when all we get to read about come March is how no Ivy League school has won a tournament game since Princeton beat UNLV in 1998 or how Princeton upset UCLA in 1996 or almost beat No. 1 Georgetown and Patrick Ewing way back when.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Penn made it to the Final Four, and I think I know the reason why. Ready? Get in really close so you can hear this...

BECAUSE IT WAS 31 YEARS AGO!

That’s why Cornell beating Temple is a bigger deal than a No. 12 seed beating a traditional basketball school.

Here are some handy dandy facts from an New York Times story published last year about Ivy League schools in the NCAA Tournament from 2007:

2009

No. 3 Missouri 78

No. 14 Cornell 59

2008

No. 3 Stanford 77

No. 14 Cornell 53

2007
No. 3 Texas A&M 68
No. 14 Penn 52

2006
No. 2 Texas 60
No. 15 Penn 52

2005
No.4 Boston College 85
No. 13 Penn 65

2004
No. 3 Texas 66
No. 14 Princeton 49

2003
No. 6 Oklahoma State 77
No. 11 Penn 63

2002
No. 6 California 82
No. 11 Penn 75

2001
No. 2 North Carolina 70
No. 15 Princeton 48

2000
No. 4 Illinois 68
No. 13 Penn 58

1999
No. 6 Florida 75
No. 11 Penn 61

The average margin of defeat for the Ivy League teams: 15.5.

Until Cornell came along this season, I had always hoped that the Ivy champ would tell the NCAA Tournament, “thanks, but no thanks. We're not going to travel across the country to be a first-round hors d'oeuvres for a potential national title contender. We're going to take our chances in the NIT where we have a chance to win. We don't need to play the No. 3 seed and lose so everyone can call us ‘scrappy,’ or laud us for being, ‘student-athletes.’”

Yeah, I know this probably isn't a popular sentiment, but I can't understand the logic of a team going to a tournament that it has no chance of not just winning, nor being competitive. And who knows, after this season the Ivy teams could restart the losing streak in the tourney. Sure, Cornell beat Temple, but it had to shoot 68 percent and get nine turnovers from a typically steady team in which to do it.

Will the same thing happen against Wisconsin on Sunday? We’ll see.

Nevertheless, I'd like my odds of winning the Powerball over Cornell’s chances to win two games in an NCAA Tournament.

The madness is about the money

“As soon as you come to terms that it’s all about the money and that merit often does not matter, then your frustration will subside.”

That’s what a psychologist friend told me the other day when we were just chatting about life and basketball. We tend to talk a lot about those subjects, but this time we both were particularly down and whiny.

Of course these things about "the way it is" are subjects that I already knew much about and had come to terms with, but it’s always does the soul good to hear it from someone with some true knowledge. No, it didn’t make it feel any better to know that essentially people who have to work for a living are nothing more than a number on some Excel spreadsheet. But whatever...

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Actually, that goes for the people associated with basketball teams that play in the NCAA, too. In a bottom line driven world, there are none shallower than the folks who run the NCAA basketball tournament. If we have learned anything through the years it’s that the feudal system is still at play in the United States and the overlords are the guys who run college sports.

This is not to say the NCAA Tournament isn’t a great event. Far from it. In regard to sports playoff systems—both professional and amateur—it’s tough to top the annual basketball tournament the NCAA puts on for its top Division I teams. Each team is assigned a spot on a grid that corresponds directly to its strength in the field, a venue and a game time are decided upon and the players are given a ball to hash it out.

It can’t get any purer than that.

And as long as no one peaks behind the curtain than no one will be the wiser. Actually, the selection committee is kind of like how author Eric Schlosser describes the meat industry in his book, “Fast Food Nation” and the people will close their eyes and open their mouths for anything as long as they aren’t told how the animals are slaughtered.

In this case it’s how the teams are chosen. Look, every year someone or some group is disappointed about being left out or underrated. It’s a cliché at this point because it happens, every single year.

But that doesn’t make it right. Since there is no oversight or even direct knowledge of how the process comes together, it seem OK to assume that teams are placed in the venue and in a matchup that will get the most money for the NCAA. That’s fine as long as it’s explicit. The trouble is it is not. Just like the NCAA wants to make billions off the backs of teenagers playing a game in exchange for free classes and room and board, I’d love to know how the NCAA selection committee arrived at the fact that Temple is only good enough for a No. 5 seed in its tourney and Villanova is a No. 2.

Perhaps I’d even ask why some of the so-called “mid-majors” were left out when they very well might play more entertaining basketball than a “major” school team, but I already know the answer. Though perennial powers like UCLA, Connecticut, Arizona, Indiana and defending national champion North Carolina, are out of it this year, the committee chose to bump up the prestigious basketball schools instead of giving others at some marquee matchups.

The NCAA hears the complaints and brushes it off as one would expect, saying there are complaints every year and the tournament is always good. Still, that’s not the point. Apparently Toyota made a quality, affordable and an efficient car until the brakes stopped working on a few of them. What if the CEO of the car company said, “Yeah, I know the brakes don’t work, but look at the wax job on that thing… It’s sparkly!”

The NCAA basketball tournament is as shiny as the most precious diamond, but beauty has its price and no one is going to watch a basketball game just because it’s exciting. Oh no, people are far too shallow to figure out on their own what is good or not. That’s where the NCAA selection committee comes in with acronyms like RPI and formulas for measuring the strength of a team’s schedule or its quality wins. For instance, Temple finished the season as the top team in the Atlantic 10 conference and won the tournament championship for the third year in a row. That’s a pretty impressive feat and when coupled with an RPI ranking as the No. 8 team in the country, Temple should be looking at a No. 2 seed at best and a No. 3 at worst.

Right?

Conversely, Villanova checked in as the No. 4 best team in the Big East, a one-game exit from the conference tourney and an RPI of 11. Based on that, the best-case scenario puts Villanova as a No. 3 seed or a comfortable No. 4.

That was easy… or was it.

Well, it’s easy until the intangibles are factored in. Stray too far from North Broad Street and there aren’t too many people who can name a single player on the Temple team. Hell, most folks probably believe John Chaney is still the coach of the team and only know him as the guy who wanted to strangle John Calipari.

Meanwhile, Villanova got to the Final Four last season by winning one of the most exciting games of the tournament. Plus, coach Jay Wright is as genuine, stylish and as affable as they come in college basketball and his top player, Scottie Reynolds, is one of the all-time greats for a school with a proud basketball tradition. He’s been written about in Sports Illustrated and everything. Maybe that’s why a lot of the top college basketball pundits say Villanova will get to the Final Four on a route that is not nearly as difficult as last season.

So is this starting to make sense now? And if it is why do we even bother with things like RPI and strength of schedule and all of those other crazy metrics? Why not start with UCLA, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas and Duke and set it up around those teams? Then, if those teams are having a bad year, just bump up the second class or the better teams from whichever glamour conference (Big East, ACC, Big Ten, SEC or Pac-10) is playing well.

See, there doesn’t need to be all this frustration and depression about wrong and right. They already sold all the commercial time so just close your eyes and open up wide.

'Nova's win a 'classic' not an all-timer

We love hyperbole in sports. If something occurs, not matter how mundane, we need to slap it with some sort of a tag in order to properly categorize it or pigeonhole it. If something isn’t the greatest of all-time, it has to be “right up there” or some such non-sense. Everybody wants to be part of something great. That’s just human nature. But sometimes things just happen. It has nothing to do with history or legacies or whatever. It’s just a game or an event or a party.

Things like that happen all the time.

Be that as it is, the wild victory over Pittsburgh that sent Villanova into the Final Four was an all-timer. It was a great, great game that was ridiculously entertaining. About halfway through the middle of the second half I IM’d CSNPhilly.com’s Andy Schwartz, who was sitting at courtside, and informed him that, “you know this game is coming down to one final shot, right?”

Yeah, I’m clairvoyant like that. I also called Matt Stairs’ homer in Game 4 of NLCS as he walked off the on-deck circle. Saw that one coming from a mile away, too.

Still, before we jump the gun in the wake of the euphoria of a fantastic basketball game, let’s take a deep breath. Yes, let’s say this again, it was an awesome game. It was easily the most entertaining game seen all year and clearly the best of the tournament.

But one of the greatest tournament games ever? Please… it’s not even the best tournament game in Villanova’s history.

Not even close.

Clearly the 1985 championship game victory over Georgetown on April 1 of that year was the best game in the school’s history. For a while some wrote that it might have been the biggest upset in tourney history, too. Not sure about that. It might be pushing it considering ‘Nova and Georgetown were in the same conference and played three times that season. It was a big game, to be sure, but the Wildcats definitely had a frame of reference on how to beat the Hoyas.

Y’know, they had to be perfect.

Besides, the wins over Dayton, Michigan, Maryland, North Carolina and Memphis heading into the Georgetown epic were no joke either. All of those games were classics, too.

So before we go all ‘Nova all the time this week, I’m going to rate the best tournament games I’ve seen. Granted, my frame of reference goes back to the early ‘80s though I clearly recall the hype leading up to the Indiana State-Michigan State clash in which Larry Bird and Magic Johnson squared off for the first time. I remember the Super Bowl-like lead up, but not the game because it started well past my bedtime.

Anyway, here they are:

1.) Duke 104, Kentucky 103 March 28, 1992 at The Spectrum Hard to argue with this one. It pretty much had it all and appeared to derail Duke’s little dynasty when Sean Woods banked in a runner with 2.1 seconds left. That set up the famous Grant Hill to Christian Laettner play:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY-iq58_oz4&hl=en&fs=1]

2.) N.C. State 54, Houston 52 April 3, 1983 at The Pit, Albuquerque, N.M. The image of this game is of Jim Valvano dashing around the court in a wide-eyed frenzy not really understanding what had just happened. Frankly, it was quite stunning – just the fact that NC State hung in there with No. 1-rated Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler and Houston. Just when we were about to settle in for overtime because it appeared as if Derrek Wittenberg’s last-second heave was going to fall short, Lorenzo Charles became college basketball’s Bobby Thomson.

Here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH1Jt2XATgE&hl=en&fs=1]

3.) North Carolina 63, Georgetown 62 March 29, 1983 at the SuperDome, New Orleans This is the one where freshman Michael Jordan hit the game-winner with 16 seconds remaining in the game. However, Jordan was hardly the best player on the court that night, or even the best freshman. Patrick Ewing was the best freshman, James Worthy was the best player and Sleepy Floyd almost shot Georgetown to the title.

But Jordan, Worthy, Ewing or Floyd are hardly what anyone remembers here. Instead, it was Freddie Brown’s errant pass to Worthy in the waning moments clinched it for the Tar Heels.

Jordan’s shot and Freddie’s pass:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suuy_tgOjo&hl=en&fs=1]

4.) Villanova 66, Georgetown 64 April 1, 1985 at Rupp Arena, Lexington, Kentucky Villanova played the perfect game and still nearly lost. That’s how good Georgetown was. It was a stunner to be sure.

Yeah, you’ve already heard everything about this one… get ready to hear more this week.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxKNd94h1zY&hl=en&fs=1] 5.) Indiana 74, Syracuse 73 March 30, 1987 at the SuperDome, New Orleans This is the Keith Smart game, but what gets lost in the glory of the final shot is that Steve Alford drilled seven 3-pointersand a skinny freshman for Syracuse named Derrick Coleman grabbed 19 rebounds, but missed a key foul shot to set up Smart’s game-winner.

The shot:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dgkmikdVM8&hl=en&fs=1]

The 1987 championship game was also the first time CBS trotted out that terrifically cheesy “One Shining Moment” thing. I can’t stand it…

And yet I can’t turn away.

Here’s the first-ever “One Shining Moment:”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LjU0VTNTb0&hl=en&fs=1]

6.) Duke 79, UNLV 77 March 30, 1991 at The Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis Perhaps the Duke dynasty began this day? Either way, this was an upset of 'Nova-G'town proportions. The funny part about this one was the story I heard about UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian cussing out his players on the walk back to the locker room after the loss.

OK, there’s six of them. We can do this all night, but this week will be filled to the brim with college hoops talk so just use this to whet the appetite.

Don't believe the hype

Quick question: What's more overhyped, the Super Bowl or the NCAA Tournament?

The easy answer is the NCAA Tournament, and here's why. It's because the Super Bowl doesn't mask what it is - a three-ring spectacle of celebrity and entertainment with a football game in the center ring. Hell, sometimes people even go to the Super Bowl to watch a football game, but if they don't there are still plenty of things to do.

Seriously, does Hugh Hefner show up at the Super Bowl every year because he's interested in football?

The NCAA Tournament, meanwhile, paints itself as the egalitarian of college sports championships, which is kind of true but not really. Sure, the selection committee lines up all the teams based on some sort of secret formula and allows them to settle it on the court. In that sense the NCAA Tournament is cool, and, of course, it generates those ubiquitous brackets that used to infiltrate every office copier this time of year before such things as copier machines and paper became anachronisms. Now, every so-called "bracket challenge" or whichever cliché gets tossed around like the equally cliché office hoops know-it-all with multiple brackets in all of the pools, is online.

The Internet, believe it or not, turned the NCAA Tournament bracket into cultural wallpaper.

Nevertheless, every year at this time the NCAA, CBS and its corporate sponsors trot out the notion of the mythical Cinderella turning up at the last minute to be the babe of the ball and steal the show. CBS touts upsets and defines its coverage with a dizzying array of highlights and cut-ins at venues around the country in order to capture the faux notion that something in line with Chaminade knocking off No. 1 ranked Virginia in a tiny gym near the beach in Oahu. Instead, these "upsets" come from teams that play in the so-called "mid-major" conferences.

Typically, these mid major teams run out of upsets by the second weekend of the tournament. That's when the big basketball factories reclaim the tournament and follow the proper path assigned them by the selection committee. After all, CBS wants ratings for its tournament and knows that the alums and fans from Duke, North Carolina and Kansas tune in at numbers than the handful of folks that follow the basketball program at George Mason or Butler.

But occasionally a team like George Mason breaks through to the Final Four, which isn't as surprising as it sounds. Sure, George Mason plays in the Colonial Athletic Association, which slips through the cracks of the coverage bestowed on the big programs of the ACC or Big East, but the CAA isn't anything to sneeze at.

For one thing, painting George Mason and teams of its ilk as mighty little underdogs fighting against the monoliths is wrong. Mason isn't a David in the battle against Goliath, nor is it a mom-and-pop shop slaying Wal-Mart before it gets crushed and the organic nature of a downtown is destroyed. Actually, the mid majors are just that - mid majors. They are like the regional chain with shops across the region that takes a chunk out of Wal-Mart's market share. Sure, more people shop at Wal-Mart or Target or Starbucks, but that isn't putting Giant or Acme out of business.

Still, there are true underdogs in the NCAA Tournament. Those teams are from the Ivy League and they have no shot. None.

There, I said it.

What's the point of having those teams in the "Big Dance" when all we get to read about come March is how no Ivy League school has won a tournament game since Princeton beat UNLV in 1998 or how Princeton upset UCLA in 1996 or almost beat No. 1 Georgetown and Patrick Ewing way back when.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Penn made it to the Final Four, and I think I know the reason why. Ready? Get in really close so you can hear this...

BECAUSE IT WAS NEARLY 30 YEARS AGO!

Here are some handy dandy facts from an New York Times story published last year about Ivy League schools in the NCAA Tournament:

But in the eight seasons since Princeton beat the Rebels, Ivy teams have lost by an average of 14 points and haven't been seeded high than No. 11. That doesn't bode well for Penn.

And:

Here are the results of the Ivy's [nine]-game N.C.A.A. losing streak:

2007 No. 3 Texas A&M 68 No. 14 Penn 52

2006 No. 2 Texas 60 No. 15 Penn 52

2005 No.4 Boston College 85 No. 13 Penn 65

2004 No. 3 Texas 66 No. 14 Princeton 49

2003 No. 6 Oklahoma State 77 No. 11 Penn 63

2002 No. 6 California 82 No. 11 Penn 75

2001 No. 2 North Carolina 70 No. 15 Princeton 48

2000 No. 4 Illinois 68 No. 13 Penn 58

1999 No. 6 Florida 75 No. 11 Penn 61

Just once I'd like to see Penn - or Cornell this season (or any other Ivy League school ) - tell the NCAA Tournament, "thanks, but no thanks. We're not going to travel across the country to be a first-round hors d'oeuvres for a potential national title contender. We're going to take our chances in the NIT where we have a chance to win. We don't need to play the No. 3 seed and lose so everyone can call us 'scrappy or laud us for being student-athletes.'"

Yeah, I know this probably isn't a popular sentiment, but I can't understand the logic of a team going to a tournament that it has no chance of not just winning, but also being competitive. Sure, Cornell could get lucky and win a game this year, but the thing about the NCAA Tournament is that those No. 13, 14 and 15 seeds don't last too long after the first upset. In fact, I'd like my odds of winning the Powerball over Cornell's (or Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Penn or Dartmouth... not Harvard - they have it all figured out) chances to win two games in an NCAA Tournament.

So, yes, Cinderella exists in the Big Dance. It's just that come Friday night she's at home by herself again.

*** Anyway, I filled out a bracket on the CSN.com web site's "Bracket Challenge!" and just like last year I consulted a mathematician/statistician in order to crunch the numbers.

The picks: Memphis vs. Kansas in the championship with the Jayhawks winning it all.

Nope, I can't name a single player on either team. That's why it was so difficult for me to go against Georgetown since it's hard to bet against a team that has John Thompson and Patrick Ewing. If only the Hoyas could get David Wingate, Reggie Williams, Michael Jackson and Horace Broadnax... look out!

As for the Big 5 teams... let's just say the odds don't look good. I'm going 0-3, but then again, what do I know?

Brave new world

If you're like me you are a shade under 6-foot-1; about 160 pounds; live in Lancaster with a wife and two kids; like to drink coffee and run a lot; and spend about 13 hours a day on your laptop. I suppose the last one of that long list is an occupational hazard of working in the Internets business. Until they move the Internets to another medium, I'm going to remain handcuffed to this machine I have (literally) on my lap. Still, even if I didn't work on web sites and the like, I'm not sure if it would limit my participation in things World Wide Web-related. Frankly, everything is on the web nowadays and it doesn't look like that fact is going to change any time soon. Look, I take crap all the time about being a web writer as if that's any different than other types of writers. Either no one wants to hear it or no one is listening, but the fact is everyone writes for the web now. Book it... or code it with the proper HTML codes, please.

Anyway, I believe that advancements in technology should make things like newspapers and television better. I also believe that advancements in technology should heighten our level of discourse in these here United States, but I don't think I'm smart enough to know if any of this stuff is true. I do know that newspapers should just stop printing paper versions already. Seriously, just stop... it's cluttering up the Starbucks and waiting rooms across the country. Someone has to pick that stuff up, stack it in a pile and put it in the proper recycling receptacle.

So stop with the paper already.

Another fact to be is that television seems to be headed to the same neighborhood where newspapers live right now. One hand washes the other or something like that. Besides, people like portability, they like to talk about things like WiFi and they like being able to be connected anywhere at any time. That means if I want to watch, oh let's say something like The Wire, a Major League Baseball game or the NCAA Tournament, I don't have to sit on the couch in front of the teevee like Jaba the Hut. Instead I can reach into my backpack, whip out the ol' HP and dial it up even if I'm negotiating myself through cross-town traffic.

Yes, it's a brave new world we're living in, folks.

How brave? So brave that newspapers, radio and TV stations are dabbling in exclusive content just for its web viewers. Actually, it's gotten to the point where media outlets have to put its programming on the web, too, thus broadening the reach beyond it small locality. World Wide Web... get it? Actually, Major League Baseball has (read the next few words as if you were Scotty[1] from Star Trek) embraced the technology to the point where its entire Extra Innings package is available on the web via video and audio.

Yeah, that's old news. MLB seemed to be waaay out in front when it came to the so-called "new media." Actually, they are so out in front on the web and whatnot that the development of its own cable TV network seems kind of quaint these days.

"Oh, how cute. Baseball is going to start its own channel. That's nice... can I get it on my iPhone?"

But check this out: the NCAA and CBS are putting every game of the NCAA Basketball Tournament online.  Yep, that's right... all of ‘em. That means if you're like me and stuck with your nose in a laptop all day, you don't have to sit in front of a television to watch another one of those ubiquitous last-second "look-ins" that personify the coverage of the Tournament. You know, if there isn't an upset or a buzzer-beater it didn't really happen...

Until now.

So just to be different I might search out a first-round game where a No. 4 seed beats a No. 13 seed by 15 points. Let's hope the walk-on sitting at the end of the bench gets in for the last minute.

*** Famous actor/comedian Billy Crystal signed one of those celebrity deals to be a player for the Yankees for a couple of days during spring training. You know, kind of like fantasy camp for the guys with the real cache.

Meanwhile, the Phillies countered with human car wreck/professional golfer, John Daly. Looks like the Yankees win again, though from the correct angle Daly almost looks like Brett Myers from the chin down.

Billy Crystal just looks like Billy Crystal in a Yankees shirt.

---

[1] Scotty was a Scotsman... go figure.

Six is better than five

Meanwhile, Johan Santana pitched well against the Red Sox yesterday. His line: 4 IP, 4 K's, 2 hits, no runs. For sure, the sports world is ready to explode with action in the next few weeks. Actually, the world sports scene will be packed with HUGE events until the end of the Olympics in Beijing where athletes will battle pollution worse than Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles combined.

Call them "The Iron Lung Games."

Nevertheless, the faux dramatics of the NCAA College Basketball Selection Show kicks it all off next Sunday. They stretch that tournament out for most of March so they can weed out all of those low-seeded teams that pulled off those early-round upsets. I guess that's the proper way to do things because the better teams usually win, though it seems as if interest wanes after all the upsets stop and the TV network stops that rapid-fire coverage of showing 19 games ending all at once.

The truth is the NCAA Tournament lasts too long. What is it, six games to win it all? Shoot, they could do the entire thing in a weekend like a CYO Tournament where school kids played two or three games a day to get a trophy for the school's trophy case.

Isn't that what they play for in the NCAA Tournament?

They play The Masters, the biggest golf tournament in the world, in just four days the weekend following the NCAA Tournament. Sure, basketball is a little more athletic than golf, but everything is relative. If a person's mind and body are programmed to play 18 holes of golf for four straight days, it's kind of like running 18 miles... or something. Actually, let me explain it this way: I once played 18 holes at Pine Valley and didn't even have to carry my own bag, but my feet were as sore after any of the 13 marathons I've run. Yeah, that even includes the '98 Boston Marathon where my feet got all swole to the point that I couldn't wear shoes for three days.

Oh, but the NCAA Tournament and The Masters are just the least of it in a busy-as-a-bee next 30 days. Major League Baseball kicks off its season in less than three weeks, the NHL and NBA playoffs start soon (I think), the NFL Draft is approaching and then the London and Boston Marathons, including the U.S. Olympic Trials for the women's marathon, cap it all off.

That's a lot of stuff packed into a month and it could be even more if the Flyers and 76ers make it to the playoffs. Forget about the Pennsylvania Primary on April 22 that could decide on who(m) could lead our union for the next four years and the really important stuff like taxes and that stuff - there's sports to follow. Besides, according to the ESPN.com story, sports people don't really care that Hillary Clinton will be criss-crossing our Commonwealth for the next few weeks putting to practice the theories that a.) she will say and do anything to get elected, and/or b.) she will claim many cities in Pennsylvania to be "home," further exemplifying theory A.

On the other side, Barry Obama seems pretty cool.

But frankly, even with the primary, the draft, Opening Day, the NFL and NFL playoffs, The Masters, the overhyped NCAA Tournament, Easter, Passover and St. Patrick's Day and the accompanying parade of songs by The Pogues ready to blast off, the issue that has everyone worked into a lather is the status of the Phillies' fifth starter.

You know, the guy who likely won't appear in his first game until the second week of the season.

Frankly, give me The Pogues... or even something derivative like The Dropkick Murphy's[1]. Let someone else wax on about the fifth starter.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKyLgRzOTsY]

OK. The fifth starter... forget about it. No matter what anyone says, handicaps or conventional wisdom. Adam Eaton, and all that's left of his $24.5 million salary, will continue to be the No. 5 starter until he no longer can be the No. 5 starter. No, that's not some sort of cryptic hocus-pocus. It means that as long as there is nothing physically wrong with Eaton's back, shoulder, mental or cardiovascular games, the Phillies will keep trotting him out there. They did the same thing last year even though Eaton went 10-10 with a 6.29 ERA (glass half full: he was 7-3 on the road and shoved it up the Mets' collective rears at Shea).

So unless Eaton's arm or back falls off or he's clubbed so badly that he's reduced to sitting Indian-style on the mound with one shoe on and the other in his non-glove hand and beating himself on top of his head with the cleated end and the new-look, throwback jersey defaced with Sharpie scrawl with the word "dog" between "Eaton" and "21," count on the veteran right-hander to keep taking the ball once every five days.

Or who knows... maybe Eaton will split starts with Kris Benson if he is recovered and ready to go come late April or early May. Perhaps the Phillies will go to a six-man rotation like the Red Sox did last September in preparation for the playoffs. Hey, with this Phillies club something like that could work.

Why not? Brett Myers is returning to the rotation after a year in the ‘pen followed by a career of inconsistent starting pitching; Cole Hamels has never pitched more than 183 innings in any season and has suffered an injury in every season going back to his high school days; Kyle Kendrick has turned in uglier numbers than Eaton this spring and probably would have started the 2008 season at Triple-A if he hadn't been pressed into service last year; and then there is steady, 45-year-old Jamie Moyer who has seemingly turned in 200-plus innings every year going back to the Reagan Administration.

A six-man rotation? Sure, why not. Or maybe a modified six-man rotation with certain pitchers jumping up a day based on matchups or the importance of a particular game.

In other words, forget about the fifth guy... who will take the No. 6 spot?

---

[1] Apparently, The Dropkick Murphys and Ted Leo are playing in Dorchester at the IBEW Local 103 this Friday night. Talk about Irish... that's more Irish than a Friday night with a bottle of Jameson and my Mick uncles and their bloodshot eyes. Everyone is welcome as long as they bring their own tin whistle, four-string and ride home.

The long, long odds

It should be pointed out that I – Mr. I Haven’t Watched a Game All Year and I Have No Intention of Starting Now – was perfect in selecting Thursday’s opening games in the NCAA Tournament. Yep, that’s right… a perfect 16-for-16. That’s the first time I pulled that off and I seem to be headed for my best picking since I went 14-for-16 in choosing the Sweet 16 over a decade ago. In that year Old Dominion went to the Round of 16. I think they beat Villanova, too.

Regardless, like most people I filled out two pools. One was based on probability as determined by a mathematician who crunched the numbers and the other was based on what I knew about college hoops. Guess which one was perfect?

Left to my own devices I came up with Oregon, Kansas, Georgetown and Texas A&M for the Final Four, though a Penn alum told me A&M was a trendy pick and after its inconsistent showing in the opening-round victory over the Quakers, it was hard to think they were going to be in the tournament for the long haul…

Yeah, exactly. Sour grapes.

On another note regarding Penn and its basketball team, Stephen Danley, the starting forward for the Quakers, had been contributing to The New York Times’ college basketball blog called “The Bracket.” In his first entry, Danley wrote about how he and his teammates deal with cliché questions from reporters on their Ivy League pedigree and how they are so-called true “student-athletes.” Needless to say, it was pretty funny including the parts where Danley revealed the fun they have to the dim reporters doing those pad Ivy League stories.

But reading it I was struck by the clichés within the clichés. Like a riddle wrapped in an enigma covered in a conundrum. Or whatever.

How’s this for a cliché: Penn, or any other Ivy League school, in the NCAA Tournament. There, I said it. What’s the point of having those teams in the “Big Dance” when all we get to read about come March is how no Ivy League school has won a tournament game since Princeton beat UNLV in 1998 or how Princeton upset UCLA in 1996 and almost beat No. 1 Georgetown and Patrick Ewing.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Penn made it to the Final Four, and I think I know the reason why. Ready? Because it was nearly 30 years ago!

Here are some handy dandy facts from the same blog Danley contributed to:

But in the eight seasons since Princeton beat the Rebels, Ivy teams have lost by an average of 14 points and haven’t been seeded high than No. 11. That doesn’t bode well for Penn.

And:

Here are the results of the Ivy’s eight-game N.C.A.A. losing streak:

2006
No. 2 Texas 60
No. 15 Penn 52

2005
No.4 Boston College 85
No. 13 Penn 65

2004
No. 3 Texas 66
No. 14 Princeton 49

2003
No. 6 Oklahoma State 77
No. 11 Penn 63

2002
No. 6 California 82
No. 11 Pennsylvania 75

2001
No. 2 North Carolina 70
No. 15 Princeton 48

2000
No. 4 Illinois 68
No. 13 Penn 58

1999
No. 6 Florida 75
No. 11 Penn 61

Just once I’d like to see Penn – or any other Ivy League school – tell the NCAA Tournament, “thanks, but no thanks. We’re not going to travel across the country to be a first-round hors d’oeuvres for a potential national title contender. We’re going to take our chances in the NIT where we have a chance to win. We don't need to play the No. 3 seed and lose so everyone can call us 'scrappy.'”

Yeah, I know this probably isn’t a popular sentiment, but I can’t understand the logic of a team going to tournament that it has no chance of not just winning, but also being competitive. Sure, Penn could get lucky and win a game, but the thing about the NCAA Tournament is that those No. 13, 14 and 15 seeds don’t last too long after the first upset. In fact, I’d like my odds of winning the Powerball over Penn’s (or Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell or Dartmouth... not Harvard -- they have it all figured out) chances to win two games in an NCAA Tournament.

But then again, what do I know. Obviously those smart kids from Penn know what's going on.

Hold on: didn’t they let Penn into the Ivy League because they were good at sports or was that Cornell?

Come on Penn folks, laugh for once. Everyone else is.

Anyway, my mathematician (an Ivy Leaguer, but not from Penn) claimed that the Quakers had a 3.8 percent chance to win a game in the tournament this year and only six other teams had worse odds.

His Final Four? Kansas, Florida, North Carolina and (ahem) Texas A&M, with Carolina beating Kansas for the championship.

Then again, he had Duke in the Sweet 16.

Didn't we do this last year?

This is the week when the casual sports fan can pretend to be the biggest know-it all out there. He can pontificate on defenses, offenses, match-ups, coaching and other intangibles. He can shout all of this with such alacrity and conviction that everyone must listen and nod their head in agreement not because the shouter is making valid points, but because they want the guy to shut up.

In other words, life imitates sports talk radio. And, yes, the NCAA Tournament is about to begin.

That means everyone has their bracket filled out, checked twice and if that doesn’t work, they complete an “upsets” sheet. You know, because it’s all so scientific.

But make no mistake about it, aside from the Super Bowl, the NCAA Tournament is the one sporting event where even the casual observer or worse, the non-sports fan, can have an opinion and participate. All they have to do is fill out one of those brackets and turn it in to the sketchy guy running the office pool who always seems to win the damn thing every year.

The best part about the NCAA Tournament is that you don’t have to watch the games to be involved.

What? Don’t have to watch the games? Such sacrilege! What about the upsets and the last-second shots, and the Cinderellas, and the corny song they play at the end with all of the hightlights….

!

Yeah, well, whatever.

As one of those folks slowly morphing into a non-sports fan, I believe that the NCAA Tournament is beginning to become a parody of itself. Or a cliché. Or worse. Oh sure, the last-second shots are exciting and the upsets are cool, but it’s getting to the point when it doesn’t occur every time, the drama gets forced. Not every ending can be NC State beating Houston or Freddie Brown passing the ball to James Worthy.

Worse, the whining and complaining about what team got into the tournament or improperly seeded has reached such a pitch that it’s become completely unwatchable and unlistenable. So Drexel didn’t get invited to “The Big Dance.” I guess it shouldn’t have lost to Rider and I doubt Drexel as a bastion of academia will figure out how to trudge on even though the basketball team has to play in the NIT.

Now don’t get me wrong, I used to go crazy like everyone else about the NCAA Tournament. In fact, it’s really interesting to me that Georgetown has John Thompson as the coach and Patrick Ewing as a star player. It makes me feel like it’s 1984 all over again.

Better yet, for the last 20 years in a row, I spent the second Sunday in March in front of the television with a legal pad and a pen and marked down where, when and who each of the 53, then 64 and now 65 teams were going to play. There was no so-called bracketology involved, no whining about who was left out or wrongly seeded (though Temple’s No. 4 seed in 1994 was wrong), or no hand-wringing, boisterous and hyperbolic rants about which team was going to go to the Final Four. Simply, it was an annual ritual in its purest form.

The result was what mattered. It was that simple. There was an air of mystery about the teams and the players because the only time we (I) saw them was on TV. I didn’t know anything about Ewing, or Bird, or Sampson, or Jordan, or Bias other than what they offered during a basketball game.

Somehow, though, that mystery and pureness soured and was ruined and those old notebooks have been moved from a box in the garage to a big green plastic receptacle at the end of the driveway. Was it the corporatization and greed that has pervaded big-time athletics? Have my priorities changed that much? Has it just gotten so boring? Whatever the reason, this year I decided that all traditions must come to an end. Sure, the fact that the only reason I paid attention in the past few years was because it related to work and the Big 5 teams were a threat to make it past the first weekend of games. Then there is the fact that I haven’t watched an entire college basketball game since… gee… when was that?

I guess that’s the way it is when one gets older. Maybe those priorities and interests change because they find their proper perspective? Memories shift, too. I can still recite the Final Four from the late 1960s to about the early or mid 1990s. As for last year or the year before that I have no idea.

And this stuff used to matter – relatively speaking, of course.

Here’s the point: I’m old, and who wants to listen to Billy Packer whine or Dick Vitale get tangled up in the lies of the mission of college athletics? Not me.

But man oh man those games used to be a lot of fun. I’m sure they still are to a lot of people, so excuse this old man as he steps aside to let others have fun without another know-it-all boring everyone to tears.

And if you’re looking for help on the bracket, try this Final Four: Oregon, UCLA, Georgetown and Memphis with Georgetown and Oregon going all the way to the end.