Talk About Futility...

"...What the HELL is going on out there..." -- Vince Lombardi

That is exactly what I was thinking as I was watching the NCAA Tournament games this past weekend. Having already picked as poorly as a grown man could, going 21-11 in the first two rounds, I entered the Sweet 16 with 12 teams left, all eight Elite 8 teams as well as all of my Final Four teams. What happened next could only be described by this; You remember that scene in Necessary Roughness where Kathy Ireland's character gets knocked down by the linebacker from Kansas after kicking the game-tying field goal, and once she gets up she gives the brooding Jayhawk a nice solid kick to the groin....THAT'S HOW I FELT after last night.

According to the website pregame.com the odds of picking a PERFECT tournament bracket are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1. Apparently that is nine quintillion to one, so clearly picking a bracket is not easy, but picking a Final Four should be, seeing as no more than 10 teams have a legitimate shot to get there. When the tournament first started I felt very confident with a Final Four of Louisville, Memphis, Pitt and Oklahoma, with Pitt beating Louisville in the title game. I thought if nothing else three of those four teams were locks to get to Detroit. HAHAHAHA...if I couldn't laugh at myself I'd be dead by now.

Memphis gets a decent draw. Connecticut was I thought the most overrated 1 seed in the tournament, and a sweet 16 match-up against an untested team like Missouri was exactly what was going to get Memphis back to the Final Four. I overlooked one small fact however, the Memphis Tigers of Tyreke Evans and Robert Dozier are not the Memphis Tigers of Derrick Rose and Joey Dorsey. Also who would've thought a team that gives up less than 60 points a game would have a C-note dropped on it. Slight miscalculation on my part.

Oklahoma was definitely a questionable pick, but I figured Blake Griffin would have an easier time recovering from his concussion than Ty Lawson would from his toe injury. That was before I realized UNC coach Roy Williams was lying to me. Lawson misses the ACC Tournament and the 1st round game against Radford, and Williams then says he will play, but on a scale of 1-10 he will be about a 6....ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!! Really? That was a 6? Thanks Roy I used to think you were a nice guy, but then again I didn't realize you subscribed to Bill Belichick Injury Report Quarterly.

Louisville was playing the best ball of any big conference team in the country heading into the tournament, and they were going to face off with the most overrated coach in the country in Bill Self in the Elite 8. Don't get me wrong, Self is one helluva recruiter, but he constantly fizzles out in the tournament (Illinois fans will agree with me), and it took a complete melt-down by Memphis for him to get his National Title. Through all of this however I forgot to follow my one rule to live by in the NCAA tournament; NEVER bet against a Tom Izzo coached team. He constantly gets more out of his team than any coach in the country, and wouldn't you know it in the 2nd halves against Kansas and Louisville he made Self, Pitino and myself look like schoolgirls.

I looked at Pitt and thought that even though they didn't win the Big East regular season or tournament title's they were championship worthy. Not having to play extra days in the Big East tourney would give Levance Fields a chance to get healthy, and Sam Young and DeJuan Blair are MAN-sters. I had seen Pitt play more than any other team this year (ACC excluded), and had tricked myself into thinking all of those close games were perfect practice for the NCAA tournament. Then Pitt decides that there is no need to double team the most dangerous man on the court, and by the time Scottie Reynolds got to half court I had started crying.

After working in television I came to one main conclusion that proves itself on a daily basis; The General Public is Generally Stupid. Apparently that theory applies to picking brackets now as well.