March madness indeed

Turns out, the Eastern Kentucky basketball team has a  6' 8" forward named Eric Stutz. They call their team the Colonels. Huh. Kentucky Colonels. Why do I have this sudden hankering for chicken with 11 secret herbs and spices? Regardless, yours truly would submit the good Mr. Stutz went to the wrong school. He should have gone to Cincinnati to play hoops. Then we would have a modern-day Stutz Bearcat. How cool would that be?

Remember Marcus Smart of Oklahoma State? It's hard to forget him given how much the media is fawning over him in their attempt to recreate his image since he assaulted that fan at Texas Tech a while back. Not to say I told you so -- but I told you so. It's like that incident never happened. Look to the right side of this page and click on "Repackaging Marcus Smart".

At any rate, during OSU's opening tournament game against Gonzaga, Smart benefited from a phantom foul call which resulted in him getting 3 free throws. Up went the first one. A brick. For some reason, all 4 of his teammates on the floor gave him congratulatory hand slaps. Free throw #2 was away and -- another brick. Another round of high and low fives. On his last attempt -- Brick III. The way the propaganda has been going, I was half expecting Smart would receive a standing ovation. Nevertheless, since Smart seems so prone to throwing up bricks from the charity stripe, it could be argued that, like Stutz above, he went to the wrong school as well. Much better had he attended George Mason. Those masons would have taught him how to get his bricks in order. As an added benefit, masons have secret handshakes. They would never lower themselves to the glad-handing public folly the OSU Cowboys exhibited on the court.

In a very impressive effort to offer fans wrap-around coverage of all the NCAA hoops action, there are 4 different TV stations covering games. Mighty CBS, and cable outlets TBS, TNT, and truTV. If one can click back and forth fast enough with their remote, they can pretty well keep up with all the action. Then again, prolonged exposure to such activity comes with its risks as well. Trying to simultaneously keep pace with a dozen or so useless stat-spouting screaming announcers, who all seem to jabber just a little bit faster than your average MSNBC host, could easily result in many viewers completely losing whatever sanity they had before they started clicking. Imagine. Millions of self-flogging naked maniacs running wild in the streets holding up posters of their God -- Dick Vitale. This could get ugly indeed, so proceed at your own peril, lest you wind up being one of them.

At that, all 4 broadcasts seem to have something in common. Cinderella teams. Cinderella this and Cinderella that. Cinderellas seem to be everywhere. Granted, the NCAA hoops tournament has been called the Big Dance, and (no pun intended) could even be considered a "ball". But there was only one Cinderella at the ball in the original story, normally credited to French author Charles Perrault, way back in 1697. This modern day Cinderella thing is getting out of control. Way too many of them. They need to get together, pick one "Cinderella", and stick to it. Whoever that team is better hope they don't have to play a late game that goes past midnight, else they might collectively turn into pumpkinheads, kind of like Charles Barkley. And how scary would that be?

Wow. Duke got knocked off by Mercer in their opening game? The Blue Devils were exorcised by Macon's finest bacon. North Carolina was going down to Providence. Quick, somebody call the FBI, Homeland Security and the US Army Corps of engineers. Obviously, some dastardly villain has mined Tobacco Road when nobody was looking. They were all probably too busy clicking to pay attention to such things.

What's that? The Tar Heels came back to barely squeak out a win at the end?

OK. Nevermind. Tobacco Road is safe for another day. Whew. That was a close one.

Yep, NCAA hoops can be fun to watch in more ways than one.

Now please excuse me. I have to go put the finishing touches on my Dick Vitale placard. Given a few thousand more clicks over the weekend and the weather getting a tad warmer -- one never knows when they might snap and get this insatiable urge to...