So, the Final Four is upon us again. I have been very hesitant to report on Sedition in Red Sox Nation Bracket Challenge of late. Let us just say that I took a man sized beating. The only team I had in the Final Four which ended up making it was Ohio State. Texas, Kansas and Notre Dame were not the best picks, I guess. So I offer congratulations to the Daniel Bellott entry, which according to my calculations is so far ahead at this point that it cannot possibly lose.

If you have the time, and let's face facts if you're reading this you probably do, check out Bob Ryan's take on the Final Four. It's not half-bad. Of course, with the magnitude of the Final Four, you know that I have to offer my irrational and quite possibly insane prediction for the event's outcome.

Watching this tournament, I finally realized why I hate Joakim Noah. He's a giant tool who celebrates every little thing like he just cured cancer. It's not just that he celebrates a dunk, or a big shot or block or assist. But he emerged from one exchange against Butler where a guy four inches shorter than him pushed him as they battled for a loose ball pounding his chest and screaming.

It got me thinking what is he like off the court? Does Noah beat his chest and scream to celebrate waking up in time for class because he set his alarm clock correctly for daylight savings time? If he gets his whites whiter and his brights brighter in the laundry room does he take a victory lap and taunt his neighbors? He needs to take it down a notch, or 12.

I think UCLA will beat Florida this time out. I don't want to see either team win, but one of them has to. I don't think Humphries will be as hot as he was last game (or in last year's championship game, for that matter), and I don't think UCLA will be anywhere near as cold. Plus UCLA improved by leaps and bounds over last year's team. Never has addition by subtraction accomplished so much as it did when Jordan Farmar went pro.

I am not comfortable with either of the coaches in this matchup. Ben Howland is bald. My sources tell me that bald people have tremendous difficulty with idea retention, what with not having hair to keep the thoughts from wafting up through the top of their head and all. On a more serious note, I think the slow-down defense first style can choke all the life out of your offense if one or two of your players isn't hitting shots.

Then there's Billy Donovan. Outside of the fact that he's a Pitino disciple, and I hate Pitino (a vestige of my days as a Celtics fan), there's the fact that he looks like Matt Damon. And not so much Matt Damon the actor as Matt Damon the puppet doppelganger from Team America who couldn't say anything beyond shouting his own name. For some reason that's all I've been able to think about as Billy Donovan attempted to sidestep the Kentucky rumors this past week.

I simply do not like Georgetown. I was 6 when they last made a Final Four, so I don't remember the Ewing Sr. teams. I do remember the teams with Mourning and Dikembe Mutumbo who underachieved like crazy. But more than just the basketball team, I don't like the school.

If you're from the Northeast, it's reasonable to assume that you went to high school with a guy who ended up going to Georgetown or really wanted to. Think back on that guy, and what a tool he was. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that that guy was a sort of arrogant sycophant. When it couldn't possibly hurt him, he was a tough guy, but when there was a grade to be grubbed or a chance that he could catch a beating, then our Georgetown guy was not so formidable. I do know a few guys who attended Georgetown and were good guys, but they are the overwhelmingly small minority.

That sort of arrogant sycophant is a type that gravitates to the Catholic schools of the Northeast, and it not a phenomenon exclusive to Georgetown. BC is packed to the rafters with them. And Holy Cross has produced the two most visible, the dueling lizard kings of the arrogant sycophants in the CHB and Bill Simmons. If you don't believe me, think about the CHB's dust up with Jurassic Carl Everett. Or Bill Simmons full on retreat from Isiah Thomas.

To make a long story short, I see Ohio State beating Georgetown. Oden (provided that he stays out of foul trouble) can shut down the Georgetown's inside game. And I'm not buying a team with the son of Doc Rivers as a championship contender. To say nothing of how sickening the montages of John Thompson Jr/Patrick Ewing Sr. and their sons will be.

And I think Oden is strong enough to shut down the middle against UCLA too. I've heard roughly one billion times in the last five years that the NCAA tournament is all about guard play. So let's agree now to call this year the exception that proves the rule when Oden leads Ohio State to the title.

After the last 50+ years, I think the last thing the Boston Celtics should want to do, from an organizational standpoint, is make franchise history. After the 16 titles, 11 in a 13 year span and all the facts that you already know, it's almost impossible to break any of the positive records. Unfortunately, what will go down in history as the 3rd consecutive year Danny Ainge should have been fired (even the year they went to the playoffs should have cost him his job, nothing says I have no idea what I'm doing like reacquiring Antoine Walker) will have seen two milestones in Celtics history eclipsed.

The franchise record losing streak was bad enough. But these things happen. The worst thing about is that the Celtics are going to play the Sixers tonight without Paul Pierce. And at stake is the fifth 50 loss season in franchise history. But I'm the only guy who thinks Ainge is the problem...

Well, after the first day of the tournament, my bracket isn't quite the smoking ruin I feared it would be at this point. I lost a few games, but only one of my Elite Eight was eliminated. It served me right for picking Texas Tech, but what can I say? I like Bob Knight, and I'd rather have my bracket die than pick BC over any team of his.

Bob Ryan had a good piece on Knight in the Globe to get the readers ready for the BC-TT game. Every now and then he almost makes me forget that he called Antoine Walker a punk when Ainge traded him to Dallas. I like Bob Knight because he is honest. He might be a mean old man who doesn't waste his time working the media, but he says what he feels. That's why the media doesn't like him. Not because he threw chairs or choked a player, but because he doesn't make tearful apologies and he doesn't show any deference to the press.

I didn't have enough confidence in VCU to pick them over Duke in one of my brackets, and I'm too lazy to check the other right now. I was rooting for them big time, and I'm thrilled that they won. I hate Duke almost as much as I hate BC. Duke well may be the Harvard of the South, but what exactly does that mean? Do they play Dueling Banjos with a chamber orchestra?

I hate Duke basketball because they're frauds. Every Duke player flops with far too much frequency to suit me. They work the officials, they whine and that's not how the game is meant to be played. Just about every questionable call seems to go their way. Three quarters of the national media fawn over them. And the limited success enjoyed by Duke players on the next level goes to show that their skills don't translate to the pro game. The best NBA players from Duke are invariably the ones who leave early. Look at Elton Brand and Deng.

I get so sick of people praising Shane Battier. He's not a great defender. He is a master of clutching and grabbing and flopping. The US National team had no business taking him to the World Champions over Gilbert Arenas. But when you hear the national television commentators discuss him, you'd think he was one of the 50 greatest players of all time. He isn't even one of the 50 best players in the NBA right now.

But then, I have problems with the cottage industry of basketball experts. I haven't criticized Ric Bucher in a while, I've had other things on my mind. But last week, he said Shaq ranked below Kareem on the list of all time centers because Shaq played with superstars like Kobe and D Wade on his championship teams. This is an excellent point, because it is a little known fact that not only did Kareem never play so much as a second of basketball with another star on his team, but the NBA insisted that his teams always play with 4 players rather than the standard 5 because Kareem was so amazingly talented. Give me a break. Kareem played with Magic, Worthy and the Big O (the real Big O, not Glen Ordway). What are they? Chopped liver?

I should have more to say after the rest of the first round games are played. I have a bad feeling that something terrible is going to happen to my brackets this weekend. And by that I mean something worse than the death of an Elite Eight team on the first day.

It's been a little while now since I last posted on a baseball related topic. Like virtually every other sports fan in America, I have been devoting most of my attention to college basketball of late. For instance, I filled out my second bracket sheet today on boston.com. I hadn't intended to enter their bracket challenge until I saw that I could compete against Brian Scalabrine. The way I see it, between my total lack of athletic ability and Dann Ainge's penchant for brain typing, if I beat Scalabrine in this competition, I should get a million dollar deal with the Cs.

I simply could not let this article in the New York Times pass by without comment. Because Philadelphia fans booed Mike Schmidt and Yankee fans boo ARod, the two situations must be somehow related. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will already know that Mike Schmidt was my favorite player as a kid. I even wrote a post using him as a foil when I addressed the revisionist claim that Jim Rice was the most feared hitter in baseball when he was in his prime. Thanks to the magic of labelled posts, you can navigate to it with relative ease by clicking the Mike Schmidt label in the right hand column.

Mike Schmidt and Alex Rodriguez are not as similar as a comparison of their career numbers would lead one to believe. A Rod broke in at a younger age, 19 as opposed to 22 for Schmidt, so he has much better numbers at age 30 than Schmidt did. But Mike Schmidt played in an era with fewer teams. He also played his entire career in the National League. Even though they're both third basemen, it's still relevant because NL lineups all have that glaring hole in the 9 spot because the pitcher bats. For a guy like Schmidt that had to be cost him 5-10 RBI over a full season.

Schmidt also played in an era of massive ball parks that were nowhere near as conducive to great power numbers as the stadiums of this generation. Think about The Vet, Riverfront in Cincinnati, The Astrodome, Three Rivers, Old Busch Stadium (when it was the ghastly monstrosity with astroturf in the 1980s before the renovation in the 90s) and Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta to name a few. And even without steroids, HGH or any of the rest of the illicit performance enhancing substances we suspect today's power hitters to have used at some point (if they aren't still cheating on the sly), current players have a massive advantage over their predecessors of even 20 years ago because of the advances in nutrition and strength and conditioning programs.

But A Rod and Mike Schmidt are different in more ways than just numbers. A Rod has better postseason stats than Schmidt, but Schmidt was World Series MVP and champion in 1980. And Schmidt's surprising low postseason stats (.236 with 4 HR and 16 RBI in 36 games) are in large part due to a disastrous World Series in 1983 (1 for 20 over five games, .050 average with no walks, no RBI and six strikeouts). But even the Mariner teams A Rod took to the playoffs had better lineups than the Phillies teams of the 70s and 80s. It seems impossible to believe, but Mike Schmidt hit 48 HR for the eventual World Series Champions in 1980. The other seven regular position players combined to hit 58 home runs.

Mike Schmidt's relationship with the fans and media weren't perfect because Philly is Thunderdome. A Rod's trouble in New York is largely his own fault. I don't blame Yankee fans for disliking him. To come out and suggest that his difficulties in connecting to the fans were the result of being good looking, rich and biracial is absolutely insane. After all, what is Jeter? He is all of those things, plus he comes up big in big moments and he bust his ass every game.

I've heard more than a few people say that Red will be looking down on the Cs and working the lottery in their favor. I don't believe that for a second. Karma hasn't deserted the Celtics. Karma beat the Celtics half to death and left the team bleeding in a ditch. If you don't believe me, consider this. The Celtics lost to the Bulls tonight in the United Center. When the Bulls wore GREEN jerseys. I don't give a damn if it is the only home game of St Patrick's Day week. You simply don't wear green against the Cs.

Can you imagine wearing green jerseys against the Celtics with Russell, Heinshon, Cousy, Hondo, Cowens, Bird, DJ, Parrish or McHale on the floor? When the Cs lose out in the lottery, and I'm predicting now that even if they had all but 3 ping pong balls in the draft, the universe would find a way to stick them with that 4th pick. So Celtics fans might want to brace themselves for Joakim Noah or Big Baby Davis. When they miss out on Oden/Durant they're going to take one or the other of last year's models. And next year, we'll see Pagliuca come out and say: "If Delonte becomes Bibby and Al Jefferson becomes Karl Malone, I'd say Danny has done pretty well." And who knows, maybe I won't be the only one who finds that preposterous.

At least Wyc has his red Ferrari with the Celtics plate to console him as Banner 17 runs the last vestiges of Celtics pride into the ground. Either he thinks he's Magnum, or he's overcompensating for something. But it doesn't change the fact that the team has gotten worse and not better since Banner 17 took the reins. And Tyrus Thomas wearing a green jersey had a career night against the Boston Celtics.

And congratulations to all the pundits who lamented the fact that Drexel were not granted an at-large bid in the NCAA tournament. They did one hell of a lot of damage in the the NIT. They really made the committee look foolish.

There is a massive event about to take place, one so large that it will consume the attention of the American people for the rest of this month. And believe it or not, it's not the release of the Mark Wahlberg opus Shooter on March 23. It is the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship.

As you may have noticed if you read this space once in a while, I like to predict the outcome of games. You may have noticed that I am wrong frequently and spectacularly. But those of you who think that I would be humbled by the wildly inaccurate Bears by two touchdowns Super Bowl pick and I would retire from the prognostication business are only half right.

I like Kansas to win it all. I think they have more depth in more positions than any other team in the field. If a team can find a way to contain Durant (extremely unlikely, but possible) or better yet shut down Augustin, Texas is eminently beatable. Throw Oden and Conley in for those two and the same goes for Ohio State. If UCLA were really ready for prime time, they wouldn't have stumbled so visibly against markedly inferior teams in Washington and Cal.

Florida is still out there, and they're still the champs. But I don't like them this season. They haven't been as hungry this year. I don't like the SEC (maybe you ought to pick them, since I said the same thing about SEC football before the BCS championship game). They did demolish Ohio State, but that was a very long time ago now, and Oden was just coming back from his injury. But I think it all comes down to the fact that Joakim Noah is almost, except for the height difference, a perfect doppelganger to a woman with whom I went to school.

I hate Bo Ryan and Wisconsin, so I can't rationally evaluate their chances, but if I could I think I'd short sell them. Memphis hasn't played any one. And I'm not crazy about NC. They seem to be able to do as many different things on the floor as Kansas does, but not quite as well. As for Georgetown, I can't get past the history of underperforming in the tourney under John Thompson Jr.

Obviously, with 65 teams and my chronic laziness, I can't break down every team in the field. I'll just say this about why I think Kansas wins. In the film The Ghost and the Darkness, Michael Douglas' character says that in prize fighting, every one has a plan until they get hit. The two recent wins against Texas show that Kansas can take a hit and come back hard. They can survive incredible runs by the best player in the game. They don't lose their cool, they don't try to get the game back in one possession. That's why I think they'll win it all.

I was surprised that Syracuse was not included, with the 22 wins over all and 10 in conference. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that Jim Boeheim spoke out in favor of expanding the field. The coach from Clemson was also in favor of the proposal, and they didn't make the cut. Having said that though, I had enough of Boeheim whining today. And Dickie V could have cut his rant on Drexel down to about 20 minutes.

I was surprised that Illinois and Arkansas were seeded. Illinois had a decent record in the Big 10, and they're one of the few teams I don't hate. But they lost to Ohio State and Wisconsin. Purdue blew them out, and to face facts, the Illini are lucky to score 50 points most days. I noticed a commercial during the Illinois-Wisconsin game that one of the fans featured in the CBS or CSTV "Fan's Journey" segments they're going to broadcast during the tournament coverage that one of the people involved is an Illinois fan. I really hope that the Illini are bringing more to the table than that. But we'll see.

As for Arkansas, they were below .500 in the SEC. I really think the SEC is overrated. Florida has had an excellent season, and they're the defending champs. But LSU fell of the map this season. Alabama was a disappointment. I hate Bruce Pearl, and Tennessee isn't going to do much damage in the tournament. Kentucky seems to want to get Tubby Smith fired. But I should stop ripping on the SEC before they put three teams in the Final Four.

I should say this right now. I have never won a bracket challenge. Every year I fill a sheet, and every year my brackets look like they got hit by the Andromeda Strain by the end of the first weekend. I try to pick based on rational analysis of the teams and their strengths and weaknesses. But I am a bitter, bitter man. So I usually end up taking the teams I hate (and there are so many - Duke, BC, Wisconsin, UCLA are only a few of them) and finding the first matchup I can foresee them losing and I go with it.

But as I thought about the years of embarrassing futility and my spectacularly bad history of picking games in any sport over the last 11 months of blogging, I had an idea. I want to know how many of my readers are smarter, or at least more rational, than I am. So I set up a group on CBS Sportsline so that you all can compete against me.

This link should take you to the site. My entry is the Lancey Howard Bracket, so you can see it before it becomes a smoking ruin by this time next week. If you want in, make sure you sign up by Wednesday. The password is s3dition. Only one entry is allowed per contestant, because it is not cool to submit multiple entries to the same pool. Either you like your picks or you don't. Feel free to ask your friends to enter, provided you have friends. I look forward to the competition and to defeating all comers.