The First Day of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament May Be My Second or Third Favourite Holiday

In my humble (and often incorrect) opinion, there are three great holidays in the course of any given year:
1) Super Bowl Sunday
2) My Birthday
3) The First Day of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

Now in an effort not to appear selfish or full of myself, I usually omit holiday #2. This means that tomorrow is my second (but really third) favourite holiday of the calendar year.

So...Happy Tournament Eve!

I have just completed an all time high five brackets. I usually do two, some years three. This year, in order to see what picks method I should use in the future, I did two sets of brackets at both Yahoo and ESPN. One bracket in each set is a regular bracket based on my passable knowledge of men's college basketball (passable for everything but the America East, which I know a little more about.) The other bracket in each set is entitled "Kat's Wishful Bracket," which are brackets where I have Niagara going to the Elite Eight, solely for the reasoning that they are representin' Western New York. These could also be classified as "Girly Brackets." I chose BYU because it's Steve Young's alma mater, Albany because they're from America East, George Washington because my old roommate went there...so on and so on.

Not being as into men's basketball as other sports, in years past I've found that some of my girly choices end up being the better choices than the well-informed ones. I, being a super geek, have decided to see what happens if I completely girly-choose one whole bracket and rely on actual factual basketball knowledge for the other.

Over the next few days, I will update you as to how each bracket is doing, along with the status of my fifth bracket, my Facebook bracket, which is a serious bracket because I'm up against some serious competition (aka, people I have to face on a daily basis.) This may not be at the same level of seriousness as the MCFFLOAT of a few years back (if you are unfamiliar with the MCFFLOAT, I suggest reading my entries from 2004--it's fun reading), but still, the stakes are high. I mean, I'm a Sports Girl, and bracket picking is one of those things we Sports Girls have to succeed at in order to further prove ourselves as real sports fans. It's one tangible we have to cement our actual sports fandom.

But then again, depending on how my bracket experiment turns out, it may turn out not to be based on ability or any level of fandom at all.

With that all said, I wish you luck in your brackets and luck in strategizing when exactly to take your lunch hour tomorrow so that you can catch the best part of any given game!

Let Me Do My “I’m Right” Dance

Call me lazy, convict me of a lack of creativity. I keep trying to write blog entries on a regular basis, but I get home from work late and exhausted, thus no energy to write an entry. But I know I have to continue to write, no matter what, if I ever want to be a good blogger. So here I am, with my weekly links, which is the blogging equivalent of a sitcom’s clip show. I promise I’ll write something of substance soon.

-The Departure Factor is a real theory--or at least Boston University men's hockey coach Jack Parker thinks so. Coach Parker made his team pretend their home playoff game against the University of Vermont was an away game by switching pre-game rituals, locker rooms, and the tunnel the team entered the ice from. It worked, and the Terriers ended up taking the series. By the way, after Saturday evening’s game, I am more convinced than ever that college hockey may be the best sport ever created. I dragged myself out of bed, laryngitis and all, to see this game, and was I glad I did.

-New sports blog that is totally up my alley: Some ladies who regularly commented on the sports blog Deadspin (which I am a little too late jumping on the bandwagon of, doh!) have begun a blog, Ladies..., commenting on sports the way it should be commented on….by pointing out the hottness factor of male athletes. Look at the lists of postings and try to figure out what two I’ve already commented on. It’s kind of obvious.

-Peyton Manning worked a Sweet 16 Birthday Party. While Tom Brady’s out there impregnating any woman that moves, Peyton Manning is making appearances at birthday parties. Really, who is the better quarterback?

-The issue of First Amendment rights for spectators at hockey arenas is an issue that I have become very acquainted with in my relatively short career in higher education administration. I was introduced to a paper on the subject authored a professor at Florida International University School of Law by the Sports Law Blog. Cheers, Profanity, and Free Speech in College Sports by Howard Wasserman gives a comprehensive overview of the case law surrounding free speech at college sports venues. If you have any interest on the subject, I recommend this read wholeheartedly.

-The BU (the Binghamton BU, not the Boston BU) Basketball Blog reported a note today about University of Hartford fans tailgating in the Events Center parking lot before Sunday’s America East Women’s Basketball Championship. I wish I had thought of that while I was there. If there is anything Binghamton has a lot of, it’s parking lots and, thus, prime tailgating spots. On a related topic, kudos to the Binghamton University student newspaper, Pipe Dream, for their America East men’s basketball tournament coverage, which included a live blog. They blew many a school’s newspaper out of the water with their coverage--and that’s not my bias talking. Ask my non-Binghamton-loyal-proud-Scarlet-and-White-wearing boyfriend. The BU-BU quarterfinal was the game I had waited two years for--finally, Binghamton got to play at Agganis Arena, and brought almost just as many fans as Boston University did. I intend on writing a blog entry on this game and the subsequent departure of Al Walker, aka, Mr. “Did-I-Yell-Loud-Enough-At-the-Refs”?