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Now this is a site I could and would get behind!
There could be something for everyone.
From Belichick to Sports Writers
From Owners to Fans
From Players to Cheerleaders
Imagine the possibilities!
Lets look at the evidence.
- Uniforms: Check.
- OTA's: Organized Team Activities? Check.
- Hours of inconvenient and multiple practices throughout the week? Check.
- Coaches: Check.
- Competition: Check.
- Fans: Check.
- Different formations for different circumstances? Check.
- Celebration Dances? Check.
- Displays of gang team colors and symbols? Check.
- Taunting of opposing players? Check.
- Perks:
- - Free food, cars, rides and lodging? Check.
- - Money advances? Check.
- - Special Treatment? Check.
If you doubt me about the perks, ask any parent of a cheerleader.
OK lets clear this up, Televised Sports today is no longer considered amateur sports.
Rather it is strictly a professional business which in reality is all about the money, and the prestige, and national fame.
To say otherwise is a lie.
I have to say, my first reaction to the USC punishment is nya, nya serves you right.
But then thinking about it more, I realize that the people that punishment is supposed to be about, are no longer there.
And, those affected, were not there at the university either. In fact, today's players, were in high school. Perhaps the last truly scholastic amateur sports venue left.
So now we have these sanctions levied against an institution for shame on you behavior. Yet at the same time, we have Paul Dee, chair of the NCAA's Committee on Infractions, saying that college athletics "should be motivated primarily by education and its benefits, and not otherwise."
B.S.
Does anyone believe the recent efforts toward conference realignment are motivated by education? How about educating us on the "Pacific" qualities of Colorado? Or on the mathematical logic of a 12-team Big Ten Conference?
It is all about the money and the television rights and the colleges exploiting athletes along the way.
If it is to be about the virtues of education, then take money out of the equation. But we all know that is not going to happen. And it is about so much more than just the universities, and sports, and the athletes. It is also about TV, commercials, sponsorships, advertising, and so on.
Heck, just look at how sport scholarships are handed out. The most go to the biggest schools in the biggest divisions with the most marketability.
I remember when I was in college, I took an elective course titled "Ethics and Business".
My dad laughed and said there is none.
I'm beginning to think the same way about the NCAA and college sports.
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.
Honestly, how many of you had this picked as the final four?
If I had combined two of my brackets, I would have had 3 of the 4. But of course I did not and am only sitting at 50% remaining.
So, who do you want to win?
Me, I am really torn between the Mountaineers, Bulldogs, and Spartans.
Oh and.....
But you probably already guessed that last one...
So,
I've liked the mountaineers all along.
Don't really care for Butler but they do have a cool 'dog' logo.
And I've also liked the Spartans but never thought they would go this far without their star player. I think that they are the definite underdogs of the four.
Hmmm, that's the second time I've mentioned 'dog' in my highly technical analysis.
I will go out on a limb and pick Butler as the NCAA Championship. Based on my highly technical analysis.
But I will be routing for the Mountaineers and the Spartans.
Conflicted?
Not when it comes to Duke.
Increase the Championship Tournament to 96 teams.
If this past weekend has proven anything, the NCAA does NOT need to increase the tournament from 64 teams to 96.
Sure there will always be the handful of teams (and their fans) that could argue that such and such team should have made the field but these 64 truly do represent the best of the best.
Given the fact that a bottom seed has NEVER (even after this past weekends cliff hanger) beaten a top seed, what good would adding more do to the tournament except eliminate the chances of having some true "Cinderellas" make the sweet 16 or final 4.
96 teams would do nothing except let more bad teams in. And who needs to watch that?
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.
There is more than one NCAA Basketball Tournament.
A small local, when I went to NC, school in Greensboro NC is going to the NCAA Division III championship series.
Guilford College, part of the Old Dominion Conference, is going back to the championship series for the 2nd year in a row.
This is huge for this College. Back when I went there we never won anything. The most excitement we had was from a two sport letter player Greg "keen-eye" Sims who played both Basketball and Football.
His brother, Marvin Sims, was drafted and played a couple years in the NFL for the then Baltimore Colts.
Greg's claim to fame was that he was easily one of the best athletes on campus, and...
He got invited by the Cowboys to attend their training camp. This was the same year that Everson Walls, who was another undrafted invite too, started and all Keen-Eye could talk about was how great Everson and all the other starters were.
Unfortunately Greg did not end up making the team but had an experience of a life time and great stories to tell.
So, congratulations to Guilford and good luck in the tournament!
I never do well with March Madness Brackets.
Probably because I do not watch or follow basketball all that much.
Probably because it is so wonderfully unpredictable.
Quite frankly, college basketball is the only basketball I feel is worth watching and then, only during March Madness.
But of course not watching or following basketball on a regular basis does not mean I do not sign up for my fair share of pickem contests.
I do.
Who knows, I just might win.
After all, I read somewhere that a lady in an office pool won the last two years running. She does not know the teams, follow basketball, or even pretend to know any of the players or stats.
What's her secret?
She likes the name. She readily admits it is kind of like picking baby names and goes with the best sounding, or unique or personal favorite.
If she can do it, then so can I.
So here we go.
Final Four
West Virginia vs Purdue
Michagan State vs Syracuse
Syracuse over West Virginia
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.
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... ;-)
OK, so I admit it. I am more into football than any other " "ball sport.
And I really do not follow it enough to be any good at bracketology.
But, I do enjoy basketball during March Madness and I do fill out a couple brackets just for the fun of it.
So, how am I doing...?
My "different" all favored teams win in the first two rounds and the upsets happen in the last two is, as you can well imagine, not doing so well...
PTS PCT(%) RNK PPR
220 38.97% 2825825 1540
Strangely enough: My best performing bracket has my Midwest division completely blown out. I had Wake Forest and Boston College making runs... HA!
PTS PCT(%) RNK PPR
230 59.30% 1884738 1380
My other bracket is right about 39%. What hurt me in all of them is that I tended to favor local teams. Oh who could of thought that!
But both VCU and American made it very interesting and came very close to providing the biggest upsets of the tournament.
Imagine having a VCU vs. American U. face off in the second round of the NCAA with one of them going on to play in the sweet 16!
Now, that would have been really great.
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 :-)
But Really Cool...
And for all you hard core backetologists...
There is a link on that page which brings you here to create your own screens.
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...
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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