'Tis the season

Selection Sunday has come and gone, but the fun is just beginning. I'm predicting record participation in this year's pool, my tenth annual. If you have any interest in getting in, but didn't get an email from me this morning, send an email to bmoconline@gmail.com and I'll get you a bracket and a rule sheet.

Meanwhile, jeers to the classless Jim Nantz and Billy Packer, who berated selection committee chairman Craig Littlepage in a nationally televised interview last night using irrelevant and misleading statistics to suggest that the committee's inclusion of teams like Air Force and George Mason was unfair. The two pompous asses went so far as to interrupt Mr. Littlepage's attempt to congratulate all the teams that qualified for the tournament, to repeatedly refute the chairman's well-substantiated claims. I certainly can't boycott CBS this time of year, but I'll do whatever I can to avoid listening to these two basketball elitists.

In my somewhat humble opinion, the committee's mistakes were limited to:

-seeding Tennessee 2nd in the DC region, when at least 10 teams were more deserving of a 2 seed
-letting George Washington slip to an 8 seed after finishing with the best record in the country

Jill and I prepped for Selection Sunday with a trip to Newport on Friday night and a jaunt to Saratoga and Queensbury on Saturday night. We saw several friends, all of our nieces and nephews, and most of our siblings, drank car bombs and European beers, and talked weddings and movies for hours on end as if Selection Sunday were weeks away.

Let the games begin.