Annual Madness

The annual American madness has struck again as it always does in March. The NCAA National Basketball Championship brackets have been set and all over the country people are busily filling them in with prognostications more improbable than a Dennis Kucinich presidency.

That's part of the madness, you see. One must, at some point on some bracket, pick their favourite team to win it all, even if that team sneaked in as one of the last at large choices in the bracket or got in by winning the Big Mideast Suncoast Atlantic Patriot conference championship and is facing a number 1 seed in the first round. Madness does not allow for cold, unfeeling rationality. Madness requires a stiff drink and ignoring that the average size of your team's starting lineup is 5 inches shorter than the other team's.

As I keep my private details to myself (yes, those too) all I can say is that my universtiy alma mater did find its way into the bracket, and I have them picked to go all the way and win the final 175-12. I was thinking a shutout, but that rarely happens in basketball.

As Stew is more the basketball expert than I, he can explain all the details regarding which teams have the most effiecient guard play, who presses the best, which teams shoot the 3 effectively enough to compensate for weak inside play, and which teams female cheerleaders will be incredibly distracting to the opposition. (My guess: most of them, especially teams from warm weather states, because...let's face it, they don't wear much there, do they.)

So let the madness begin! Here are my top 4 picks for upsets in this year's tournament:

• Slippery Rock over Mongoose State by 4


• Sasquatch U. over West Alabama Polytechnic by 7


• Millard Fillmore State over Rancid Cactus University by 3


• Alaska-Moose Wattle U. over Genghis Khan by 5