March Madness

This first post comes after a marathon college-basketball-watching-session with my peeps in Ann Arbor, MI (Jordan Miller, Dave Dobbie, Mike Arnold) and in Lansing, MI (Lynne Gratz, Turney Gratz, Jeanne Gratz, Danny Leitao, Lauren Leitao, Will Pringle, Rebecca Pringle).  After an action packed first weekend of the NCAA tournament I am left with a number of impressions:

1.  I can no longer watch sporting events without a DVR.  The NCAA College Basketball Tournament is still one of the best sporting events one could ever watch, but my god, the commercials are completely intolerable.  To begin, while I fit their target demographic (youngish men), I can't relate to any of the products/images/messages being conveyed.   But the most glaring problem with the commercials is their frequency.  It numbs the mind.  It makes you sick.  It makes me want to organize a boycott, or draft legislation, or find any way to fight back against such a stupidly mind-numbing cacophony of corporate messages.

2.  Despite how I might try, I rarely succeed in predicting which teams will be upset, and which won't.  My bracket is ugly now, (12th place in a 16 person competition), but I get solace in the fact that most everybody else is within a couple of points.  If UCLA can roll, I get a chance at redemption.

3.  The sheer drama of college basketball trumps anything the NBA can dish out.  These kids play so hard, game in and game out, how could you not want to see Davidson beat Georgetown? (Despite my prediction that Georgetown would advance to the great eight!)

I'm looking forward to next weekend to see if the PAC 10 can get more than one team to advance to the next level.  I suspect UCLA and Stanford have the best shot.