Bracket?

Bracket? The word itself has been responsible for many decisions throughout my life. Usually where to eat or who I'd play in the first round of the foosball tourney. You know, life and death shit. Seriously though, I've definitely used a bracket to determine where I was going to go eat and where to go/what to do for an evening. So you would think that I'd be loving it at this time of the year considering they say "bracket" every five words on ESPN right now. But it's started to oversaturate my mind. It's not as bad as the two week build up to the Super Bowl or the debacle that is the BCS but it's bad.

Some random March Madness thoughts:

-I do not want to hear about your "unbeatable system" you use to select your bracket. This tournament is the living proof that shit happens. Pick most of the top seeds to win and flip a coin for the rest. How's that for a system? If I won't listen to the ESPN guys why am I gonna listen to some guy at the bar?

-Please make the regions make sense. Is there a home-court edge to the higher seeds or not? Is it really fair to make a team like Temple go from Philly to Denver for the first round? Make the trips as convenient as possible for the teams or make every team travel. These are supposed to be neutral court games and all teams should be equally fatigued and jet-lagged in the name of fairness.

-Please make some Final Four tickets available to the actual public. Less than 10% of the available tickets were made available for purchase by the public. And it's not like thousands of tickets are going to the students of the schools involved. This is worse than trying to get Super Bowl tickets.

-Keep the officiating teams intact. I don't know why some sports do this. Good teams are generally better than groups of all-stars who are not familiar with one another. For proof just look at Team USA Basketball since 2000.

-I don't like the play-in game. I wish there was some way to play the NIT first and give the NIT winner the 64th bid. I know it's not very practical but it would create the ultimate Cinderella storyline.

-Allow drinking at the tournament games. I went to the first round in Buffalo and half of the people with tickets were at the bars around the corner from the stadium. This is college correct?

-Televise all of the first round games. CBS has a good start on this, they are making all of the first round games available via the Internet.

-Start the championship game earlier. It starts after 9 PM ET. I'm OK with staying up later but it's kind of impractical. Even 8 PM ET would be a large improvement.

-Ban the word "Cinderella" from use during the month of march. Perhaps the only word more overused in the English language is the word "sale" during December.

-Let one pool reporter in the room with the selection committee. This isn't a fraternity initiation. Unless they're hiding something in that room. Or they just think they're that far above everybody else.

-No announcer is allowed to orally pleasure Duke or UNC on the air. C'mon, it's not like we're naming names here.

Tune in next time for our bracket picks. C'mon do it. We'll name names and everything.

Whurly.