Friday afternoon games
Ah... This is more like it. A handful of toss-up games each of which went against me. I picked an 11 over a 6... just the wrong one. It's starting to look much more like a Matt Sherman bracket. Obviously, things could have been much worse. In 20 years I have not felt worse about my championship team after watching its opening round game in my 20-year bracket history. I thought Memphis looked bad yesterday? They would have beaten Pittsburgh by 30 on a bad day.

Pitt. gave up 20 offensive rebounds to a No. 16 seed. They turned the ball over nearly that many times, constantly stood around and took contested 3-pointers and committed a bevy of idiotic fouls. Had East Tennessee St. shot even a decent percentage from the foul line, it wins that game going away and I not only would have had my dream of picking the first 16-seed upset crushed, that historic team would have beaten my championship pick. It doesn't get much worse than that.

On a completely different note, I am finding ESPN to be even more unbearable to watch than usual with its coverage of the tournament. More specfically, I am bothered by the presence of Bob Knight. In all honesty, I think that he makes a terrific commentator. He is knowledgeable, intelligent and willing to be honest about teams who looked terrible. I guess what make me upset is that, despite the fact that he is good at his job and was good at his previous job as a college basketball coach, he is a fairly despicable human being. And ESPN not only rolled a truck of money up to his door to hire him a few years ago, but their anchors and other analysts can't stop kissing ass like they're afraid they're going to get hit over the head with a folding chair if they piss him off. I guess I just don't think that a person being good at what he does should give him or her a free pass.

The same situation happened recently with Charles Barkley, a fantastic analyst for TNT's NBA games. Barkely is wildly entertaining, funny and refreshingly honest. So refreshingly honest that, when he was pulled over for suspicion of DUI, he told the cop that he was in a hurry for sex. Of course this incident was the subject of round the clock coverage soon after it was reported and the response from the public surprised me. Hardly anyone thought he deserved much of a punishment and most of the e-mails and radio show callers basically said they didn't think it was a big deal because they enjoyed Barkley. And, sure enough, TNT slapped him on the wrist and he is back at his job as if driving while intoxicated never happened.

Again, I know I am almost definitely in the minority, but I do believe that one's personal actions should have some bearing on his or her profession. It took dozens of embarrassing incidents of verbal and physical abuse for Indiana to finally give Knight the axe mainly because it was far more important to the Hoosier fans that they continue winning basketball games than it was for their univesity to be represented by someone who wasn't a thug and a bully. Every year, my dad would pick against Indiana and Georgetown in the first round because he despised their coaches and I came to respect that. It always cost him a few points in the pool but, perhaps karmically, he still always managed to beat me.

Friday morning games
Well the dream came crashing down and in spectacular fashion as I figured it would. A pair of gut-wrenching last minute losses not only breaks up the perfect bracket, it drops me out of first place in my pool. I realized this morning that the vast majority of my upset picks are playing today... not good. The way things are going, my little sister's bracket, which literally consists of two upsets in 63 games, is looking pretty solid.

In some ways, losing a game early this morning is a little bit of a relief. Because, as I was cruising to my 16-0 start (a solid 5 games better than Mr. Obama by the way) I had a moment of unabated terror. You see, when signing up for a bracket on Yahoo! there is an option to click a box that makes you eligible for a $1 million prize if you select a perfect bracket. Since, every year, I am convinced that I am going 63-0, I obviously click this box. But, this year, I had no recollection of doing that. I know I clicked it for Elliott a few days ago and that dream came crashing down pretty quickly. (He had Utah St. in the Elite 8. How stupid was that?)

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that I had glossed over that small detail this year and I also became convinced that I was going to run the table as a result. I started to think about just exactly what I would do if I beat the trillion-to-one odds, picked a perfect bracket and was denied $1 million because of a technicality. I turned to Shelbi for support. "I would be so angry at you" was her response. Thanks.

But, seriously, how would someone live that down? Knowing my personality, I truly don't believe I could. I would have felt so stupid and guilty I probably would have had to just go into hiding. It reminded me of when Shelbi had just gotten back from Japan nearly six years ago. As a brithday present, she got me some very nice tickets to the Seahawks/49ers game that fall. For months they sat on top of my fridge. The day of the game, I went to get them and they were no longer there. We looked for more than an hour. I turned my apartment upside down. Shelbi drove back to her apartment and did the same. No luck. We were geting to the point where, if we didn't find them soon, we wouldn't make it up to Seattle in time. And I remember thinking "If we don't find these, I'm going to have to break up with Shelbi because I won't be able to look her in the eye again." Eventually my friend came over and found them for us at the last possible second. (My brother had moved them as he was "tidying up.")

But this was a similar feeling. Granted I still had to go 47-0 but I truly believe God has a sense of humor like that. But, fortunately, Shelbi and Elliott no longer have to worry about me leaving them in a few weeks out of shame.