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!