NCAA Tourney Analysis: I Was Wrong + the Genius of Matt Stone and Trey Parker

On B-ball

Billy Packer of CBS and I were wrong about the NCAA tourney.
He was wrong about how too many mid-majors were let in,
I was wrong about how not enough mid-majors were let in.
We were both wrong about what would transpire thereafter.

The NCAA invited a good number of mid-majors to the dance this
year, and despite the lousy seedings, these teams have been
kicking ass and taking names. Northwestern State, Montana,
Bradley... hell, 16 seed University of Albany was up 12 points
on UConn in the second half last night. Wha Happen???
Sadly, Kent State still got creamed by Pitt, but I guess the
underdog/little guy can't win them all.

Needless to say, my bracket (like most of America's, I'm assuming,
unless you've gotten lucky or watched wwwaaayyy too much
college ball over the past four months) is shot to hell. Oh well.

One quick note on the NBA... exciting happening is the
development and emergence of Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets
and Nenad Krstic of the New Jersey Nets as quality centers
with a finesse game. They can play the post and rebound,
but more importantly cut to the basket, pass, and spot up
to shoot the jump shot. Watching these players adds a
level of quality and legitimacy to the league found more
often if not almost exclusively at the college level.

On Stone and Parker:

In case you've missed it... Comedy Central yanked a South
Park episode poking fun at Tom Cruise, supposedly because
Cruise told Viacom parent company Paramount he wouldn't
hype MI:III if the episode aired again, to which Southpark
creators Stone and Parker issued the following response:

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the
million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily
anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping
Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses
and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble
bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!" Signed,
"Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu."

Ladies and gentlemen, make up your own minds about the
humor value and/or appropriateness of this exchange, but I
will go out on a limb and write that the promulgation of this
retort and the peaceful public response make protections of speech
and tolerant societies a bright and beautiful thing.

  

Are Andy McGinn & EA Sports paying royalties on the
J.T. Smith piece? Inquiring mind wants to know.

Checking In

Greetings and salutations my fellow information superhighway
globe-trekkers. I realize I've been fairly remiss in posting
here for about a month... which, if my hit counter is to be
believed, represents about 1.2 people visiting per day with
no newish material to gaze upon. What an awful thing.

So, some updates.

1) Thanks to the modern day miracles of craigslist and
consulting work, I was able to sit courtside at Madison Square
Garden for what coach Jim Beoheim called one of the best basketball
games in the history of Syracuse's 44 year program. It was,
in fact, a fantastically thrilling event, with Gerry "The
Pride of Scranton" McNamara sending the game into OT with a
dramatic 3-pointer, and the hitherto mediocre Cuse hanging
on to beat the #1 team in the country, thus sending the squad
to the NCAA tournament. And when I write "courtside" I mean
courtside. Barring a highschool or division III contest, I've
never had such a good seat at a b-ball game. And there I
was, first row dead center behind the press corp in the 'Most
Famous Arena on Earth.' How good was my seat? So good that
Clifford "Uncle Spliffy" Robinson--UConn's most famous, and
infamous-- graduate to the NBA, had a worse view, sitting one
row behind me and one section off to the side. Good times.

2) If you scroll down just a bit you'll see some spiffy photos
of Brooklyn covered in a lot of snow. Some climate we have
here in the Northeast. One month to the day (last Sat.) from
that blast of snow, I was playing frisbee in Prospect Park
under clear skies and 70 degree temperatures. Can't say we've
had much of a winter here in NYC. This doesn't bode well for
global ecological sustainability, but I can't complain
too much about this in the moment. When I gaze upon a polar bear
cruising down the East River on a makeshift raft, then it will be
time to dedicate my life to a cause. I expect this to happen
sometime in the next 10 years. Stay tuned.

3) I want to send a big Thank You out to two buddies from
college, Eli Reusch and Bill Hickey, for making it down from
Boston for a friend's surprise birthday party. For the number
of times we've seen each other in the past five years, one
might think Boston is as far from NYC as Capetown, South Africa.
It is, however, about 4 hours and $20 dollars via the Chinatown
bus. I'll return the favor and come up to visit you guys
sometime soon. Promise. Be right there.

Now... lets get political for a second, because these are not
apolitical times. Three ruminations:

A) I'm not sure how long it will take Scott McClellan and
Fox News to use to use "Iraq" and "Civil War" in the same
sentence, but for all intents and purposes, I think we're
there. Ahem: US Forces are fighting a bloody insurgency
in Iraq, a nation that is also gripped by civil war. Can't
you see McClellan tapping Lincoln on the shoulder at
Gettysburg and asking him to refer to the battle as a
'domestic disturbance' or some such thing? I can.

B) Global warming is a real big problem, and needs to be
addressed in terms of individual and collective behavior.
People who drive H2s, for example, are behaving irresponsibly
and amorally. All of them.

C) The NCAA Tournament should come with the tag-line of:
'despite our claims to objectivity, and nifty computer generated
stats like RPI and Strength of Schedule, the whole affair is
a silly subjective exercise in creatively giving lots of teams
the shaft.' Big Conference teams are at the same time over
represented and underrepresented (see Seton Hall and Cincinnati),
a few token charity cases are let in to give the illusion
of equality (see Air Force and the Northeast Utah Valley
Conference Championship winner), and deserving Mid-Major teams
who have a tough time scheduling games with the big-dogs
are hamstrung with impossibly tough seedings and pairings
(see George Washington and Kent St.). Kent State, for example,
a solid Mid-Major team with an impressive record, must,
with the coveted 12 seed, defeat Pitt, Kansas, and then Memphis
(presumably) TO ADVANCE TO THE ELITE EIGHT. Good Luck!!!

Until next time,

DMW.



The NCAA selection committee: friend of the man,
destroyer of dreams.