An Easter Present

Looks like the ACC is the big winner of the Easter Bunny Presents this year.

First:

Maryland Point Guard Greivis Vasquez from the University of Maryland is the winner of the 2010 Bob Cousy Award.
Vasquez, a senior from Caracas, Venezuela, averaged 19.6 points per game for Maryland this season while recording 6.3 assists and 4.6 rebounds per game. He led Maryland to a 24-9 record, a share of the ACC regular-season title and an NCAA tournament berth. Vasquez is a Wooden Award Finalist, was named as the ACC’s Player of the Year, and was named to The Sporting News First-Team All-America.

Second:

Duke played an all around outstanding game to advance to the championship game against Butler. I just wish it was a different ACC team representing us, but hey, I'll take it.

Third:

We have Easter celebrations underway here at the Fumbled Returns blog and household.

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Amazed, you'll be....

Believe it or not, there is more going on than just March Madness, Brackets, and Health care Reform.




There is also the US Census taking place.

Now how does this tie into Sports and Stocks?

Read on, and you will find out....

First of all the US Census is comprised of only 10 simple questions and you can not fill them out online. So if you get an email saying click here to complete the census, don't, it's a scam.

The questions are done via paper forms, and in some cases, census takers who go door to door or call (after completing the form if there are any questions or incomplete answers).

NOTE: A census taker must follow-up in person with every address that doesn't mail back the form in order to obtain the responses. So, this fact alone should motivate folks to fill out the form and mail it back.

The 2010 Census will help communities receive more than $400 billion in federal funds each year for things like:
Hospitals
Job training centers
Schools
Senior centers
Bridges, tunnels and other-public works projects
Emergency services
The data collected by the census also help determine the number of seats your state has in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Obviously the more accurate the data, hopefully, the more efficient government will be in allocating these funds and programs.

Distilled demographic data also benefits businesses. Here is one such example...

When an owner of 48 Subway stores throughout Arizona looks at the data, he can realize that in west Phoenix, where there is a large Hispanic presence, Fanta would be a big seller. In suburban Tucson, home to a lot of families with children, Hi-C pink lemonade sells well. Populations with a lot of older folks, on the other hand, seem to prefer root beer and Cherry Coke. Soda selection isn't just a question of regional tastes, but a major revenue driver. Sandwich price points like the $5 Footlong may bring customers into the store, but selling added drinks -- that's where you make the money.

Here, someone has taken census data, combined it with business / market knowledge, and applied the result to help boost business returns. And for any publicly traded stock, this would improve the performance of the stock in terms of quarterly profits and returns on investments.

This got me into thinking that there are obvious limitations to only ten questions and paper format of the US Census. There must be a ton of other information already out there, available, (such as the marketing knowledge of the Subway owner) which could be useful information.

Also, there should be more efficient ways of accurately collecting and analyzing data on a regular basis and it probably already exists.

Heck, we already pay taxes, both federally and locally, so the government already has primary and dependent information as well as ages and location of those of us who pay taxes.

Note: Right about this time in my thought process my cell phone rang.


Almost everyone I know has some sort of electronic communication device which they carry with them almost everywhere.

Residency information, Names, ages, family members (see "friends and family" promotions) could be collected as well as GPS information.

Not to mention that there are a ton of "social networking sites" out there which also have various information available.

Now I am not advocating disclosing specific information, that would be illegal. But the data could be mined and distilled, as census data is, to produce statistics, which can be disclosed.

Oh, and speaking of Cell phones...

Note to Tiger: Leave your Phone or PDA home at the masters. We don't care whether or not you win or lose, but guaranteed, the media will care if anybody sees you texting while playing golf!

Of course, we could all just get tiny little micro chips implanted in us and all that sort of information could be collected instantaneously. And don't worry about the cost of the procedure, I'm sure it would be covered under the new Universal Health care Reform Act.

Sorry, I digress just a bit... Now on to the rest of my Census post...

Then I got into thinking that there must be other country census's taken and I wondered what sort of data they collected.

For instance, in NZ, they collect data on similar things such as the USA, but they also collect data on Religion, Incomes, Education, and a whole lot more!

And right about then my wife forwarded me an email about a guy who got an Official UK apology from the UK Job office about Anti-Jedi Discrimination.

A believer in the Jedi religion won an apology from a job center that threw him out for refusing to remove his hood.

They apologized, adding: "We are committed to provide a customer service which embraces diversity and respects customers' religion."

Chris said: "I was just standing up for my beliefs. Muslims can walk around in whatever religious gear they like, so why can't I?"

Clicking on the link for the official Jedi Religion Homepage...

It states that the NZ Census considers such religious classifications as "Wicca" to be valid but that Jediism is not.

Perhaps if more census data was collected here in the United States there could be more and better representation of the population and accurate demographics for all.

After all, I bet there are some Jedi believers here among us now and we don't even know it.

See, I told you I could tie sports, stocks, health care and census together all in one post!

Amazed, you are :-)

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Bracket Busters

Officially I am in two bracket leagues.
Technically, I am in three. The third I did on my own not going against anybody in particular and based it entirely on who had the best last 10 game winning streak.

After round 1, I have 24 games out of 32 correctly picked in one and 19 in the other.

As it turns out, the third bracket I did also stands at 19.

All my brackets still have the final four in tact. Which was and continues to be my goal. I picked three different winners for each bracket. Syracuse, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

As I look at the different sites(ESPN, CBS, and FOX)NOBODY seems to have picked perfectly, but quite a few have 30 out of 32. That's amazing!

I wonder how many, like me, created more than one bracket?

This got me into wondering what the average number of brackets each person plays in.

I could not find an answer to that but I did find other interesting stats and trivia.

1) Odds of picking a perfect bracket? 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1. That’s nine quintillion to one!

Think of it this way: if every man, woman, and child on the planet randomly filled out one million brackets each, the odds would be greater than 1000 to 1 that even one would have a perfect bracket

2) According to the NCAA, more than 10 percent of Americans participate in March Madness “office pools.”

3) The FBI estimates that more than $2.5 billion is illegally wagered annually on March Madness each year. Less than 4% of that amount is wagered legally in Nevada.

4) The phrase “March Madness” was coined by Henry V. Porter in 1939 to describe an Illinois high school basketball tourney. Brent Musburger first used it during NCAA coverage in 1982 causing a legal battle almost as insane as the playoffs.

Good luck to everyone and their brackets, except those going against me... ;-) and don't forget to get out this weekend and enjoy the weather! It is going to be close to 70 degrees here and sunny!

And to think, this time last month we had almost 3 feet of snow on the ground.

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4 for 3D

CBS Sports will show the semifinals and championship game of the NCAA men's basketball tournament in 3D.






Wow, don't these guys look excited!

Can you imagine having to go to the a movie theater to watch a final four game?
Or any other sporting event for that matter?

Not only do I not get excited about 3D, I can't see myself getting excited about going to see a game in a theater, wearing those stupid glasses, and watching the whole thing in a dark movie theater.

There is no interaction with fans, friends, and it kinda gets in the way of enjoying the whole experience. It just does not seem "special" to me.

God forbid you or someone else has to go to the bathroom or something, "ummm pardon me... oh excuse me, oh sorry, can I get by... thanks..." and miss a great shot or score! There certainly is no Tivo there either.

I just don't get it and probably never will.

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Simply Disgusting...

This disgusts me, as it should anybody...

Whites-Only Basketball League: All-American Basketball Alliance Bans Blacks, Foreigners

A whites-only basketball league aims to launch in twelve cities this summer, according to a report in the Augusta Chronicle. The All-American Basketball Alliance would also ban players born outside the United States.

The league's commissioner, Don "Moose" Lewis, claims that he doesn't "hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now." Thus, he says, the All-American Basketball Alliance would be "a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like."

The report includes additional shocking quotes from the commissioner:

Lewis said he wants to emphasize fundamental basketball instead of "street-ball" played by "people of color." ...

"Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch?" he said. "That's the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction."

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Agent Zero Man...

Abe Pollin is probably rolling over in his grave right about now...
Are we going to start calling them the Bullets again...

And here is my obligatory joke like "it's OK we all know he can't shoot"

Of course I do not know the facts...

They range from

Bragging "oh yeah, well mine is bigger than yours"

to Conscientious "I just wanted to get them out of the house away from the baby"

(Ummm excuse me, the kid is like 1 month old - unless if you have the guns laying around in the crib (the babies, not yours) I don't see the sudden problem) Oh and what about gun safes and I guess it was OK when you had the other much older kids around.

But I digress... sort of


Point is, this is serious stupid stuff and should not be tolerated by the Bullets Wizards, NBA, or fans.

If any of the gun stuff is remotely true...

Send him up to spend some time with Plax. I'm sure they will get along just fine.

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Basketball Elite Eight...On DVD

For those who just can't get enough basketball or for those whose better half would rather watch a movie together, I have a few suggestions...

From: Washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Jen Chaney

Even the most buzzer-beater-obsessed among us sometimes need to take a break from March Madness. And by take a break, I mean watch something basketball-related on DVD.

As popular as the NCAA Tournament is, it's amazing how few really good movies and TV shows focus on the game that inspired it. Seriously, start naming football and baseball films. You can go on for hours, right? Now try to do the same thing with basketball. Trust me, it won't take long before you're scraping names like "Juwanna Mann" off the bottom of the imdb barrel.

Still, some quality basketball DVDs are well worth viewing during those key pauses from bracketology. Consider the following elite eight suggestions.

"Glory Road" (PG, on DVD and Blu-ray), has all the cliche montages and soaring emotional moments one expects from a Disney sports movie. But it deserves credit for compellingly telling the story behind a historical 1966 moment: the first appearance of an all African-American starting line-up in an NCAA championship game. "Glory Road" also stands as one of the rare Hollywood films to capture some of the excitement of March Madness, as it follows the Texas Western Miners through a series of victories that lead to that climactic Big Dance finale against an all-white Kentucky squad.

Many consider "Hoosiers" (PG, on DVD and Blu-ray) the gold standard of basketball movies. Personally, I think it's a tad overrated. (Exhibit A: the distinctly 1980s-era score, which sounds completely absurd as the soundtrack for a comeback story set in the '50s.) But because I'd like to avoid receiving hordes of angry e-mails from Indiana basketball loyalists, I will concede that it's strong enough to be included here, based on the presence of the always exceptional Gene Hackman. By the way, if you crave a quality selection of DVD features, go with the two-disc collector's edition of "Hoosiers," which offers more extras (including a making-of documentary and deleted scenes) than the more recent, but comparatively skimpy Blu-ray release.

If "Hoosiers" isn't the greatest basketball movie of all time, then what is? Easy. It's "Hoop Dreams" (PG-13, on DVD), the immensely moving, epic 1994 documentary about a pair of inner-city Chicago friends struggling to raise their prospects on the court and someday make it to the NBA. This isn't just the finest basketball movie you'll ever see, it's one of the finest documentaries ever made.

It's tempting to refer to "The Heart of the Game" (PG-13, on DVD) as "Hoop Dreams" for females. But that would be an insult to this 2005 doc, which follows a Seattle girls high school basketball team through several roller coaster seasons and works just beautifully on its own terms. Though focused largely on star player Darnellia Russell and the life-altering event that briefly sidelines her career, "Heart" shows what can be achieved when a group of young ladies are empowered to make their own decisions, "draw blood" on the basketball court and stick by each other, no matter what.

Hardcore sports nuts may think 2000's "Love & Basketball" (PG-13, on DVD) spends too much time on the love and not enough on the basketball. But most viewers will appreciate Sanaa Lathan's grounded performance as a ferocious female baller who demonstrates that a woman can be even more devoted to the game than her man is.

In the mood for some retro b-ball? Well, sadly, the disco-flavored "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh" is not on DVD. But while you wait for that flagrant oversight to be rectified, check out the first two seasons of "The White Shadow" the Emmy Award-winning CBS drama that ran from 1978 to 1981 and starred Ken Howard as the former NBA player-turned-high-school basketball coach at L.A.'s Carver High School. Serious issues -- from race relations to teen pregnancy -- are tackled while players with nicknames like Salami and Hollywood dominate the court in short shorts and tube socks up to their knees.

The "your mother" jokes and the slick moves come fast and furious in "White Men Can't Jump" (Rated R, on DVD) a con artist comedy that lets Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes work their street ball magic, and gives co-star Rosie Perez the opportunity to become a "Jeopardy" champion by showing off her knowledge of foods that begin with the letter Q. Now that's impressive.

If all this year's tourney excitement merely makes you hunger for more, then skip the movies and TV shows and get a copy of "NCAA March Madness: The Greatest Moments of the NCAA Tournament" a DVD released last month that contains 75 minutes of comebacks, buzzer beaters and classic performances by legends like Bill Walton and Michael Jordan. Of course, not every key game gets its one shining moment; the 1985 Villanova upset over Georgetown, for example, is notably absent. But there is enough here to satisfy most fans, especially those who still haven't seen that 1992 Christian Laettner shot enough times yet.

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Bracketology all done at 16?

Well, actually all but one of my three brackets are "done".

In two brackets I showed undying loyalty to local teams and the ACC.
Of course this meant plenty of upsets.
Too many in fact, so, now when I look at those brackets, I'm upset... ;-)

I still have this one which is "OK".

500 points: 82.16%
Round One 220 of 320
Round Two 280 of 320

Though as I said in a previous post, I went with the best ranked teams in the first two rounds; which meant no upsets, no Cinderella's, saving the upsets for the final rounds.

So, I still have a good chance of being upset with this bracket too... ;-)

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Bracketology

I've been playing with picking brackets the last couple days and I keep coming up with the same SuperBowl2 result.

It's like a bad version of groundhog day all over again.

So, I decided to try one a bit different.

It's different because it has NO UPSETS in the early rounds. Every single favored and higher ranked team wins.

I save the upsets for the last 2 rounds.

So what did I come up with?
Check it out?

And then I did my obligatory crazy all ACC final four bracket! LOL :-)

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Represent ! ... And pray

I'll start with the local boys:
Five teams got in from Maryland/D.C./Virginia area.
Radford, Morgan State, American, VCU and Maryland.

Sorry Radford, you drew UNC in the first. I hope you win, but I'm not betting on it.
Morgan State, Again, I think you have a chance but... Hmmmm no. Sorry.
American and VCU can win each of their games...
Oh, and so can Maryland - believe it or not!

Branching out to the rest of the ACC:
There are two Big 10-ACC matchups in the first round:
Clemson-Michigan, and Florida State-Wisconsin.
There could easily be two more in the second round:
Duke-Minnesota, and BC-Michigan State.
The ACC has never lost the challenge, and went 6-5 head-to-head this year.
I'm hoping the winning streak doesn't end; but again, not betting on it.
Picking Michigan State, Duke, Florida, Michigan.

And I believe Wake Forest should advance past the first round as well.

That will leave...

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Lets go to the Video Tape!

OK, so there was a bunch of stuff happening in and around the area and this is my attempt to capture it for all to see.

All three stories/videos involve people getting involved with the community, sharing in the love of a sport, and most importantly just getting out there and having fun!

First, If you ever wanted a chance of fame and think you can belt one out of the park, you can always try out at Nationals Stadium.




Secondly, we have the never ending battle between the press and local politicians. This past Monday, they both had a chance to take it to the court and settle it once and for all at Verizon Center.
Fortunately nobody got hurt.
I had a bit of trouble embedding this video so here is the Link!


And last but not least. Everyone knows about the Harlem Globetrotters, but out here in rural Virginia we have the equally fortunate opportunity to witness the Harlem Wizards who came and entertained everyone at the local high school. They played against many of the regional high school players. I don't have a video of their performance but it did have much of what is here on their site.

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Big Time for the little guys...

I love it when a good small or unknown college gets a chance at the big time. A chance to make an even bigger name for itself and get on the National Map.

It happened a few years ago with George Mason. Though not small, they have like 30,000 students, they were relatively unknown nationally even locally they were known mostly as a commuter school.

But a trip to the Final Four changed all that for them and suddenly they found themselves in the national spot light. Of course they have a great school, with great programs, growing with a diverse population and were ready for the attention and popularity.

Radford is another great Virginia school, with good programs and student population, trying to make a new name for themselves; Though they were the first campus to be 100% wireless ready, which is really cool in and of itself.

If they make it anywhere near as far as Mason, they will definitely be on the map with new found attention!

Congratulations to Radford for winning the Big South Championship and a trip to the NCAA Tournament and catching the fever of March Madness!

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Trash Talk'n with the Pres...

Here is a great series of articles that is pure Washington and Sports.

Talk a little trash...
By J.E. Skeets















Unless you've been living under a rock (and it's okay to admit if you have, I'm told rent is cheap), you probably heard that President Barack Obama sat courtside at D.C.'s Verizon Center Friday night, watching his hometown Chicago Bulls take on the Washington Wizards.

The First Fan drank beer, read the game program and left early (with four minutes left) during a blowout. "All common American activity," as Tom Ziller put it, "except most of us don't sit courtside, nor are we important enough that the NBA will hold up a tip-off until we get to our seats." (Speak for yourself, Z!)

But Obama's night of "Joe Plumber Americana" didn't stop there. He also exchanged a few playful words with a diehard Wizards fan sitting a few rows back. Yes, that's right, the 44th President of the United States joined in a little trash talk. Awesome.

The vocal instigator: Miles Rawls (above, standing, "heckling"), the commissioner of the Barry Farms' Goodman League — a big-time summer circuit in Southeast D.C., which has starred Gilbert Arenas and Kevin Durant, among others.

Dan Steinberg of the D.C. Sports Bog, in a fun must-read, talked with Rawes about trading barbs with the President.

Here's a snippet from the interview:
[Rawls] said his chatter, like always, was unscripted, "right off the top of my head. I just had to see how he was gonna take it," Rawls said. "Once I knew he was a big trash talker, too, about them Bulls, that means the gloves came off." [...]

"I wasn't heckling the President and I don't heckle the players. I talk about their weaknesses. We was having a good time. He was talking trash and I was talking trash. I couldn't believe he was that laidback and real. I loved it."

And while they talked through much of the game, Rawls — who had never met a President — said no lines were crossed. "I wasn't disrespectful," he said. "I know my limits."

So, for example, he told the President that if he was rooting for the visitors, he was "gonna have to keep it to a low roar, because we're cheering for the Wizards over here." Obama, in turn, repeatedly needled Rawls about the Wizards' habit of letting leads evaporate, especially when the Bulls made a run.














"We was just going back and forth," Rawls said. "Once Chicago started coming back, he told me, 'Now I think you need to sit down.' When Tyrus Thomas dunked on somebody, he turned around, was talking smack. Then JaVale McGee had that alley-oop, and he gave me the high five. We was just supporting each others' team, having a good time."

Click here for the full interview.

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History in the making...

OK, So, How do I tie in Obama Coronation, oops I mean inauguration, in with the theme of my new blog?

We go with the "New Theme" and try something new...

In the immortal sports casting words of Warner Wolf...
"Let's go to the Video Tape"

Click on the links...

New President...



New Drop in Stocks...


Hey Mr. President... How 'bout some hoops...

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