MARCH MADNESS baby!!...

Anyone that has known for me a long time knows that this is probably my favorite time of year: MARCH MADNESS. Specifically, I love filling out brackets and the pools that accompany these brackets. I can actually remember when I first became interested in filling out brackets for the NCAA's. I had to be in 2nd or 3rd grade, during the productive years of the Fab 5 at Michigan and Eric Montross' dominance at North Carolina. My uncle and his friends were running a pool where you picked the name of a team out and if they won the tournament, you won the pool. I ended up pulling Arkansas, the year before the won the National Championship - what luck.

My recreational gambling progressed in middle school, when I began running a brackets pool among my friends in 7th grade. That continued on through all the way to my first year of college. We only came close to getting caught once, in 7th or 8th grade when the principal came across one of our brackets. Luckily, we were in the head of the class so we got a simple, "Don't do it again" and we were back on our way to gambling on school property. The most successful year of the pool had to be Senior year of high school, when we even managed to get some of the teachers involved in the pool. Pretty clutch.

In addition to running my own pool, I've always been involved in pools at both of my parents' work places and also in a huge pool run at my Aunt's work. My picks tend to be pretty good so I've won pools here and there. Last year was actually my most successful year when I finished in first place at my Dad's work and in second place at Mom's.

This year, I've been a little more subdued in regards to March Madness because I've been logging too many hours at the credit union and I wasn't able to watch that many college basketball games during the regular season. In the past, I would enjoy taking either Thursday, Friday, or both days off when the tournament begins to take in the games and enjoy the excitement. This year, I'm working 11 hours on Thursday and 8 hours on Friday so I'm going to be missing most of the action.... BEAT.

Finally, I'd like congratulate / celebrate the Temple Owls, my alma mater, for making it to the Big Dance after winning the A-10 tournament. In my four years at Temple, they never made it to the tournament so I was never able to bask in the glory. But, as a Temple Alumnus, I've taken great pride in the team, and although I wasn't able to really see any of their games, I'm extremely excited they're going to be playing and they got an excellent draw in Michigan State who I think they're going to beat. GO OWLS!!

One final F-U to CBS for putting the Temple - MSU game on at 12:30 in the afternoon on Thursday. You couldn't have put it on in the prime time so I could actually see the game... could you?!

Thursday morning before the game starts, I'll be revealing some of my expert picks for upsets, cinderella teams, and who's going to be winning it all...