Expanding March Madness

There have been suggestions to expand the tournament? Is it just me or are teams being left out a non-issue?

I have mixed emotions on this one.... I really hate that a lot of times the small conferences lose their best team in those meaningless conference tournaments. I kind of think the high seeds deserve the virtual bye they get by playing these teams. There has to be some reward for having an outstanding season so the regular season is not completely meaningless.

Including all of the conferences is a good PR move, you avoid the Boise St. situation (like you have in NCAA football), and the visibility over time can turn into some fairly well established programs see So. Ill, Creighton, Gonzaga, Butler, George Washington. 5 years ago we would have said they didn't belong....

Through the visibility in the tournament they were able to establish themselves. They never win as 16 seeds but as 15 and 14 seeds we have seen a few upsets, don't let one of them get the 12 seed!

All that being said, there is no argument you don't have the 64 best teams in the tournament, but none of the teams left out are likely to win it either.

If you are to expand the tournament, you should have 4 play in games that consist of the top eight bubble teams. These slots would 4 "at large bids." Teams who won their conference tournaments (i.e. FAMU vs. Niagra)should not be in "the play in game." The play in game (as it stands now) should consist of the top two bubble teams (i.e. Drexel vs. Syracuse). Read more!

The Discman

This is a real quick story on how I came to purchase my first MP3 player.

They opened up a new 24-Hour Fitness near my home. When you are using the fitness equipment there are always televisions, and headphone jacks on the fitness equipment (treadmills, stairmaster, etc.). At this particular location they had televisions, but they didn't have the headphone jacks for you to listen to the programming. After 45 minutes of cardio with no entertainment, I knew something had to give. In addition, at the club that I usually went to the programming was increasingly slanted towards the Lifetime Network persuasion.....

So I noticed that pretty much everybody at the gym had some type of media player, i-pod, mp-3, one of those walkmans on a arm-band they all had something. So I decided to take matters in my own hands and went home to search my house to find my own portable media device so that I can listen to my favorite music at the gym. When I got home the only device I could find was a CD Discman. I thought cool, I can take all my old CD's I can jam every day during my workout!

So my next day at the gym, I had my CD of the Lox (Money, Power, and Respect). The CD is hype I am thinking I will be so inspired I will do an hour of cardio easy and just be throwing up sets of 225 on the bench like nuthin..

OK, first problem. On the modern equipment there is no where to put a discman!!! I failed to notice that every one else had i-pods and little cute mp3 players they could comfortably slide in their pockets. Next, when I finally did find a way to get the discman situated on the treadmill it skipped so much it would not even play. I turned on the 10 seconed ESP (electronic shock protection, do you even remember what that is?) thinking that would solve the problem, it basically saved 10 seconds worth of the CD skipping at a time.

I literally messed with this thing for 15-20 minutes. People were walking by looking at me as if I had totally lost my mind... I must have looked like I had just got off a time machine and they couldn't figure out what era I was from and what that device I kept messing with was supposed to do. I think this is the vision they had in their head.


So after another 30 minutes on the treadmill, with absolutley no music at all. I proceeded to work out and as you can imagine I evidently had not thought about what I was going to do with the discman while going from station to station at the gym, before long I had to lug that bad boy to the locker room and store it in my gym bag.

Needless to say I invested in a mp3 player. I share this story as apreemptive strike, as my wife has had entrie groups of people doubling over clowing how "throwed off" I must have looked up there with that d-i-s-c-m-a-n... Read more!