Bracket Blues

It's another Monday mornin' and I can't afford to snooze,
I'm just lookin' at my brackets and cryin' in my shoes,
All my teams are full of talent and all they do is lose,
I've got those college basketball tournament bracket blues!

Now that I've had a couple of days to recover from the carnage of the opening rounds, let me just share a few bitter thoughts. Okay, I knew Illinois and North Carolina were not as good this year as last year, but somehow I thought they would advance past the likes of Washington and George Mason. I know the Big Ten has not had a stellar year overall, but Iowa losing to Northwestern Louisiana?

The conventional wisdom (TV commentators' hot air) is that these upsets demonstrate the parity in college basketball today - or was the parody of college basketball that the tournament has become? Just as long as there are enough fools sitting through commercials of Coach KKK shilling for Chevy, there will be ample air time for Billy Packer to fill with his all-knowing blather. Does it really increase anyone's knowledge or enjoyment of the game to have this egomaniac passing judgment on every decision made by players and coaches?

There is all this talk about the "power conferences" that dominate, or at least influence, the selection of tournament teams and seeds. By my count, ten teams in the Sweet Sixteen are from those conferences, including five from the Big East. The Big Ten has a big zero, the ACC has (the Anointed) One, the PAC Ten and SEC have two each, and the Big 12 has one, while the "mid-major" Missouri Valley has two giant-killers still in it. As a thoroughly humbled midwesterner, I am drawing no conclusions just yet.

But I will make some predictions for the next round. Because I like the sound of their names, I'm picking G-town vs. V-nova, G-Mason vs. U-Conn, G-zaga vs. M-phis, and Puke vs. Texas, which just won't fit the pattern. Then on Monday morning I'll have something else to cry about.