I would have posted sooner, but I have found myself once more in mourning for a tournament bracket sheet that died before its time. It doesn't happen every year (the catastrophic early collapse always happens, just not the reason why this particular year fell apart), but every now and then I talk myself into picking Georgetown to go deep.

I don't know why I do. I hate Georgetown, and odds are, if you know people who went to Georgetown as I do, you probably hate Georgetown too. Georgetown is dick central. Of the 30 or so people I know who've attended Georgetown, I can think of 3 who aren't total dicks. That's certainly not a large enough sample from which to make a reasonable assessment, but then I'm not necessarily a fair guy.

All signs pointed to Georgetown losing early in this tournament. We all know the cliche that March Madness is dominated by great guard play. Georgetown featured the closest thing to an NBA ready big man available to any of the field of 65, but they didn't have an answer for Davidson's quickness and shooting. So now I look like even more of a moron than usual, but I can live with that.

I did want to see what happened when Roy Hibbert got to play against Brian Butch and the Insane Clone Posse that makes up the Wisconsin front line. I know the entire state of Wisconsin is made up of 5 family trees, but these guys look enough alike that I wouldn't be surprised if they came off an assembly line.

On one level, Hibbert should have demolished the Badgers, based on talent alone. However, in the Coach K era in college basketball, sometimes pure talent is more of a liability than an asset. Far more important is the ability to swallow one's pride and sense of morality and hack, slash, hold and flop in the face of superior talent. And that is Bo Ryan's mission statement as a basketball coach. So Wisconsin would likely have won, especially considering they have vastly more experience than Georgetown (Brian Butch alone has been in college for 7 seasons now, after all).

Having my bracket come apart so spectacularly almost took away most of the joy I felt (and (I'm sure shared with all right-thinking Americans) when Duke lost to West Virginia. Almost, but not quite. Seeing Duke bow out this early in a tournament is always good, but it gives me hope that there might be a chance that teams who flop and whine might be losing their advantage with the officials. That said, I am still terrified by the prospect of another San Antonio vs. Detroit matchup in the NBA Finals. But time will tell there...

In other matters, actor Richard Widmark passed away on Monday. And all I have to say about that is who knew he was still alive? I am a big fan of old movies, and I like my fair share of Westerns. But I was never a big fan of Richard Widmark. I suppose I ought to be more sensitive, now that he's dead, but I am an imperfect person.

I also feel compelled to bring this story to your attention, if you haven't seen it yet. A Mississippi man "accidentally" shot his wife while trying to use a .22 pistol to put a hole in his wall during a satellite TV installation. Prosecutors are considering charging him with manslaughter.

Not for a minute is this manslaughter. Granted it's Mississippi and not civilization, but they ought to throw the book at this guy for everything and anything under the sun. I am not a big advocate for gun control, but I do believe in moron control. Only a total jackass would use a gun in a DIY job. So I'm thinking the guy shot his wife deliberately and came up with this ridiculous story under the Sam Spade principle that a sensible story would have gotten him arrested in the first place.

In a sad news item, somebody stole and torched Shawne Merriman's $180,000 Mercedes this week. Isn't that just awful? What's the world coming to when a fine, upstanding young man like that can't trust the rest of the world to respect his possessions? To add insult to injury, the perpetrators stole his wheels (literally) and left it on milk crates before they burned it.

I have to say it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. I may have mentioned in this space a time or two that Merriman is a fraud. After having read his official bio on his official website, I think it's time we upgraded Shawne Merriman to archfraud status. I guess one can't expect full disclosure from his own website, but it might have been refreshing to see some mention of Merriman's suspension for performance enhancing drugs not too long ago amid the description of how he became one of the NFL's most dominant (excpet in playoff games) defenders.

All too often, when I mention a story, it's to focus on the negative aspects. But today, I have to praise the courageous leaders of the great state of Maine. No longer can merchants in Maine sell novelty cigarette lighters. This is win-win for the people. First, children can no longer be tempted to play with the lighters and start accidental fires. Second, youngsters will no longer be tempted to smoke to look cool.

Shame on all 49 remaining states who rely on parents and other adults to take responsibility for the objects with which their spawn come in contact. Shame on the leaders of the other 49 states for assuming that their citizens might just be mature and responsible enough to handle decisions like this on their own. And shame on the rest of the nation for being slightly more mature and responsible enough not to be led around by the hand like our neighbors, the Mainiacs.

I know you don't need me to connect you with the news, and it is slightly hypocritical for me to provide this service when I try to avoid news on TV, radio and in the newspaper because it's too damn depressing, but I have two more minor items you may not have noticed. One is sad, the other is ultracreepy.

Al Copeland, the founder of Popeye's Chicken, passed away. This is sad, unless you are a total d-bag and you don't eat fried chicken. Popeye's is much better than KFC, and our world is a little poorer today, losing the man who brought Louisiana spiced fried chicken to the rest of the nation.

And the creepy story...LG is manufacturing a cell phone that feels like human skin. I find that to be beat on a number of levels. First, at this point cell phones can do much more than they should, with the capacity to send texts, photos, videos and play MP3s.

Maybe I'm hopelessly old fashioned, but all I need my phone to do is dial. I hate that I have a cell phone, and if it weren't cheaper than a land line and on very rare occasions useful, I'd throw the damn thing in a river or off the back of some tool's head as though I were a Red Sox fan and it were a slice of pizza.

This story also gives me the heebie-jeebies because it seems to send a message that we are so starved for actual human contact that we might want a phone that feels like a person. Either that or we're trying to get in touch with our inner Dr. Frankenstein. It's not good. In fact, it's quite gross.

About two weeks ago, I posted in this space to ridicule the Philadelphia Eagles for their terrible decisions this offseason. I couldn't conceive of a world in which a team could slap the franchise tag on LJ Smith and throw a mountain of cash at a cornerback who considers it beneath his exalted dignity to tackle. And then I took a quick look at the Oakland Raiders offseason transactions. Good thing I'm not a Raiders' fan.

According to John Clayton, Al Davis got the money to back his insane spending spree from selling non-voting shares in the Raiders. I wonder if the people who sprung for those shares are suffering from buyers remorse right now.

I think, and it's just me talking at this point, that when the dust settles, the trade and ludicrous contract extension that brought DeAngelo Hall to Oakland (at least until his next sideline hissy fit) will go down as the worst of these moves. Lest we forget, even as Clayton compared Hall to Lester Hayes and Mike Haynes, that this is the same man who whined to the league office that TO spat in his face (after TO torched him for two TDs in the game) and neglected to man up and throw down with TO.

It doesn't exactly sound like much of a pathway to the old Raiders mystique, is it? I can't say for sure what Hayes or Haynes may have done had a WR who torched them for two TDs compounded the injury with the insult of spitting in their face. But something tells me that their reaction might have been a bit stronger than crying to the League Office. I'm guessing guys like that just might have taken it upon themselves to kick the offender's ass. But maybe that's the difference between an NFL Hall of Famer and an overpriced fraud.

As you are all aware, the NCAA tournament is underway, and has been for a round and a half at this point. And all I can say is that I am very depressed. I tune into games desperately seeking the greatest broadcaster of all time and find that he isn't allowed to broadcast every game.

And don't give me any static about one man being unable to broadcast multiple games concurrently. Based on what I read from Bill Simmons and his legion of minions, Gus Johnson can eat lightning and crap thunder. So he surely can broadcast three different college basketball games in three different cities in three different time zones and fix the plot holes and inconsistencies in Shakespeare all at the same time.

I guess it's fair to say, at this point, that I am somewhat less than impressed by the cult of Gus Johnson. I've watched football and basketball games he's called for a few years now, and I just don't see what makes him so special. In fact, if I had to do some sort of blind test, a sort of Pepsi challenge for sports announcers, I don't know that I could tell the difference between Johnson and Kevin Harlan or Kenny Albert or mediocre broadcaster X.

This year's first round slate marked the longest span of time in which my sweet sixteen survived intact in at least five years. Generally, I lose at least one (and often a Final Four team) in the first set of games on the first day of the tournament. It's just a natural result of picking games based on personal animosities as opposed to logic and/or reason. But it can be embarrassing.

This year's casualty was UConn. And they played a very entertaining and nerve-racking game before falling in OT to the UCSD Torreros. The other teams I had picked to win in the first round who fell short were Winthrop (after watching Tom Tuttle from Tacoma fold in Communist indoctrination in Volunteers, I will never pick Washington State, plus they gave us Drew Bledsoe and Ryan Leaf), St Mary's, Arizona and Kent State. I didn't have any of those teams going anywhere, so it wasn't that bad a day and a half any way. For the moment, I am tied for first in the SIRSN challenge, with slightly better odds of winning than any of my competitors.

And as an aside and at the risk of making the same joke as 10 million other people, I should have seen this UConn loss coming. The UCSD Torreros were throwing Jim Jones' grandson at them, after all. It got me wondering as I watched the game, how many times do you think some friend's parent offered that kid Kool Aid without realizing that it was a trifle indelicate in his youth?

The Western Kentucky game was considerably more enjoyable for me, since I called that one correctly. Or more precisely, I guessed right. But this isn't the day for detailed game breakdowns. God knows, there will be at least 20,000 of them floating around the internet by this time. And there weren't any incidents that I feel compelled to complain about at length in the games.

However, there are a few things with which I had a problem in the last day and a half that I am sure will piss me off to no end before this tournament ends. Considering the fact that they are a division of Toyota and they presumably appeal to the higher end consumer demographics, I think the good people at Lexus owed us a little better or at least more imaginative ad campaign than this pathetic where did all the hs go drivel.

But the real villain of this tournament to this point has to be Coke. Maybe I am the only person who feels this way, but I hate the Coke Zero ads. The fake efforts to get a lawyer to sue Coke Zero on behalf of Coke for taste infringement were funny for all of about 13 seconds when they first came out a couple of years ago. Alas, even then the ads went on for 30 seconds, or at least 17 seconds too long.

Coke Zero doesn't taste like Coke. It tastes sort of like coke that has been distilled through a rag soaked in Windex. And don't ask me how I know what Windex tastes like, my childhood contained a series of ill-advised experiments which I am, in hindsight, lucky to have survived. The fact remains that these commercials weren't terribly imaginative to start with and have been on for far too long. And they play them fourteen times an hour it seems.

There is one more thing I need to complain about. Despite what Pat Forde would have us believe, I will not be rooting for Bruce Pearl and Tennessee this season. Or ever. Forde wrote a nice puff piece about the trials and tribulations Pearl experienced after he ratted out the University of Illinois for recruiting improprieties while he was an assistant at the University of Iowa. For that noble and self-sacrificing act, Pearl was blacklisted and relegated to Division II until he made such a success of himself his vast awesomeness could no longer be overlooked.

Truly it is a heartwarming story, until one recalls (as Forde admits) that Pearl taped conversations with the recruit in question to obtain the evidence to rat out Illinois. Despite the fact that I am myself a product of a Jesuit school, I do not find that the end justifies the means. One cannot really portray oneself as a martyr and a crusader for that which is right if one has stooped to questionably ethical means to do so. So it's not just that natty pale orange blazer that makes Bruce Pearl look ridiculous as he stands on the moral high ground, it's what he did to get there.

And if you need more convincing that Bruce Pearl is, in fact, a douche, don't forget that he went to BC, a notorious haven for douches from all walks of life. And he's a close friend of Bo Ryan, a noted douche in his own right, and the coach of the University of Wisconsin Badgers in Madison, Wisconsin, which is douche central in the Midwest.

So, the NCAA tournament is again upon us. I'm sorry that I haven't been posting much lately, but I haven't really had all that much to say. I'm staying away from commenting on the Celtics because my comments on the Red Sox throughout last season looked fairly ridiculous when October's travesty finally played itself out. And I just haven't really been all that motivated to watch a lot of college basketball these days.

One of the problems, I suppose, when it comes right down to it is that I hate Duke and I hate North Carolina. I just don't want to see either team do well. Nor do I want to see announcers grovelling at the feet of the coaches and players associated with either team. And unfortunately, while one can never escape the latter (especially where Duke is concerned), there was far too much of the former for my taste this season.

And then at the end of last week, Illinois launched an improbable, history making run in the Big Ten tournament. Too bad they fell short, but it was still a great story. And you can tell it was a great story, based merely on the reaction of the Chicago media's one man answer to the bubonic plague, Jay Mariotti.

I realize I spend a scandalous amount of time in a blog devoted (ostensibly, any way) to the Boston sports landscape shredding a columnist from Chicago. But if ever there were a person who deserves it, it's Mariotti. And since not every one has the time to read fine sites like Jay the Joke and Boise Wants Jay, there's always room in this space to let Chicagoans know that a few people on the East Coast feel sorry for what they have to endure.

I've been thinking this for a long time, but I am now just about convinced that Jay Mariotti is the biggest douche in the continental United States. It seems improbable that a moderately trained chimpanzee could spend a decade or so covering sports and manage after all that time to fail to understand why we watch sports. And yet Mariotti has not developed the faintest inkling of the curious appeal that a team like this season's Illini can have over even the most cynical, relentlessly negative, unpleasant people in America (i.e. me).

Illinois had, up until this month began, been one of the big disappointments in college basketball. They could do a few things effectively enough to hang in most of the games they lost, but they didn't do enough of those things well enough to win, or even be a particularly watchable team. And all of that changed this week, at least except the bit about being particularly watchable.

Although, as an aside, I should introduce this anecdote. I have a friend who did a semester abroad at St. Andrews in Scotland, mostly for the academics, naturally, but he managed to get in a round or two of golf. He came back with a term he picked up from the natives to describe what we might call a wormburner. In Scotland, some people call it a Sally Gunnels shot, after some female track star in the distant past. The rationale, as they put it: "She's not pretty but she sure can run."

Leaving aside for a moment that which is Scottish and very likely sexist, that was this season's Illini in the Big Ten tournament. In the words of Victor Frankenstein, it wasn't supposed to be this way, it was supposed to be a thing of beauty. But for three and a half games over the course of four days, Illinois reminded us that we look to sports as the last remaining area where David has a shot against Goliath.

In every other aspect of our lives, some one some where is probably micturating upon you in some sense and expecting you to believe that it's raining. It may be your boss. It may be Uncle. It may be the guy who lives three doors down from you and brings his dog to drop a deuce in your wife's flowers while you're just trying to get some damn sleep. Who knows. But odds are some one in life is making your life more difficult than it really ought to be and you probably can't do all that much about it.

And go figure it had to be Wisconsin who stopped Illinois. If ever there were a team custom tailored to play the modern American Goliath, it's Duke. But Wisconsin's a close second. In fact, I hate the Badgers and Bo Ryan second only to Duke in the NCAA landscape today. And for a lot of the same reasons. Wisconsin players flop shamelessly and whine incessantly.

If they wore blue and white instead of red and white, all Wisconsin would need to play Duke's mini-me is a Coach who looked enough like a certain German dictator to make me think there might have been something more than meets the eye behind the plot of the classic Gregory Peck film The Boys From Brazil. Too bad they have to settle for a cheese ball who looks like a frustrated, failing lounge singer, right down to the lame wardrobe and giant bald spot.

Not so in sports. Every once in a while, there's a team like Illinois that, despite all signs to the contrary, manages to pull off an inspiring run like this weekend's trip through Indianapolis. And when that improbable run occurs, there's going to be some douche like Mariotti out there to try to ruin that for the rest of us. He's the guy who's going to sit through the sub-prime meltdown, the Bear Sterns China Syndrome and the damn recession that's falling down around our ears right now and rip to shreds the few bright spots that might give us a reason to smile for 15 minutes. Even I won't do that/

I guess the lesson here is that if you find yourself on the other side of what the guy I go to for my Red Sox info blithely refers to as "the douche trade" and I'm not standing there with you, you must really be king douche. So once more, congratulations, Jay.

In other matters, I have decided to revive last year's failed experiment. If you want to enter the Sedition in Red Sox Nation bracket challenge and prove that you can pick college basketball games better than a bitter dude whose motivations stem from bizarre, yet deep-seeded, personal antagonisms against coaches he's never met on campuses he's never visited in towns he can't spell, have at it.

Go to this link, and sign up: http://sirsn.mayhem.sportsline.com/e
The group password is s3dition

And I promise to cheat only if I lose.

What a difference a day makes. Yeah, I went out on a limb and said I wanted Ohio State to take down the tyrant last night, and it kind of, sort of didn't happen. OK, Ohio State was soundly beaten and Florida became the first repeat champion since Duke in 92. But things could be worse.

As painful as it is to backtrack from that pronouncement, it must have hurt Bill Simmons just a bit more to eat his words from Monday's Basketball Blog. The Sports Guy actually said that he could live with Joakim Noah on the Celtics, should they miss the Oden-Durant sweepstakes and wind up with the number 3 pick in this year's draft. After all, I don't claim to be a basketball junkie, a devotee of good basketball and I don't get paid for this.

I may not watch 300 basketball games a year, but I could see what Simmons apparently missed. Noah is going to an NBA team, who will waste high pick and a considerable sum to learn a painful lesson. I almost feel guilty for writing what I am about to write in the wake of that tender scene where he ran into the crowd and climbed row after row to see his mother (which is just a bit creepy). But Noah's game has to progress quite a bit to be considered fatally flawed.

First off, he can't create his own shot, which is only so much of a problem since he's not a very good shooter. Have you seen him dribble the ball? He moves like a newborn caribou on ice. I don't think he's quick enough on the defensive end to make it at the next level. He's just not athletic enough to make it, and he's not big enough to offset his limitations.

He was a very good college big man, but the thing about that is the road to organizational hell at the next level is paved with the remains of guys who were tall but not tall enough, quick but not quick enough, big but not big enough, tough but not tough enough. That's Joakim Noah.

I guess if I had to compare him to any current or former NBA players (and it's hard, what with the fact that he's biracial and ethnic sensitivity is the order of the day), I'd go with Udonis Haslem or maybe Danny Ferry. There is an outside chance that he might turn out to be a serviceable power forward, if he goes to a team that has a solid center. But that doesn't seem very likely.

His performance in yesterday's game was more indicative of his NBA potential than any of his other tournament games. Oden was the only NBA ready big man he's faced, and it wasn't even close. Noah's not ready for prime time.

I really don't want to hear about how well he played against other teams in the tournament. None of the guys Noah faced in the first few rounds has much of a chance at the next level. So what if he ruled the court like a man against boys in the Butler game? That's what he was. No one on Butler was over 6-7, and when the starters got into foul trouble, Noah had 6 inches on his man. It's not particularly impressive to dominate under those circumstances.

For a little while, part of me wanted to see the Celtics draft Noah. Getting him will hasten the end of the Ainge era, or at least it ought to, since the team would not improve significantly. Of course that presumes that Banner 17 wants to field a winning team and isn't in the basketball business for a tax dodge, which might not be the case. Plus Ainge must have compromising photos in his possession. How else can you explain his bulletproof status?

But then I got to thinking, and I realized that there is only a small chance I can become a Celtics fan again, even if Ainge goes. I don't care for Banner 17 as an ownership group. My brother had season tickets through his business up until the Walker trade. When they hadn't renewed after the trade, Wyc placed a call to the company. Wyc gave the party line about how the team could improve and how the ceiling with Toine had been reached.

Now, the Celtics may have reached their ceiling in 01-02. But the team has not shown any signs of mounting a playoff run without Antoine. There is a considerable body of evidence to show that they're a lot worse without him than they were with him. Not only is this team a poorly constructed loser, it's also in salary cap jail. Yes, they're not as far over the cap as the Knicks. But there was a time when more was expected of the Celtics franchise.

I might find a way to overlook Banner 17 if this team were remotely likable. Paul Pierce is a whining, overrated bust. His defining moment as a Celtic will most likely end up being that playoff meltdown at the end of game six against Indiana in 2004-2005. That cost the Celtics the series (they were up 3-2, and the team, with the exception of Walker, failed to show in game 7). He wonders why he doesn't have more endorsements? Maybe if he had more charisma or delivered when it really mattered with any consistency (let's not forget that he fell to the Celtics after a memorable 0-11 from the field in his final NCAA game), he'd get more money.

I just don't see much future for the young players. I think Al Jefferson and Delonte West are as good now as they'll ever be. Don't forget, a high profile pick will take time and shots away from the "pieces" already in place. Ryan Gomes is a tweener. Rondo can't shoot. Telfair is a bust who will never live down that terrible trade which sent a much better player to Portland. So what if Gerald Green won the Dunk Contest? At the end of his career, he may have a resume full of dunk contest victories but very little in terms of more tangible accomplishments.

Throw Noah into that mix, and in the short run it should cost Ainge and Rivers their jobs. Unfortunately, the Celtics will be stuck with him for a few more years after that. But if the team ends up with pick three and they take Noah, and the plan is to keep Ainge and Rivers long term, there's only one way to go. Noah should have his choice on a night in and night out basis of any of the retired jerseys for his number.

I think the Celtics are getting close to forfeiting the right to celebrate their legacy. Instead of fielding this travesty of a team, they might as well let Noah wear number 6 for a game or two, then 33 or 15 or 18. Hell, I don't think Cowens is very busy these days, he could be forced to convey Noah around the city (or at least around the TD Banknorth Facility) in a rickshaw. Maybe Havlicheck could wash his car every day.

For what they've done to this organization since they purchased the team, Banner 17 would have been only slightly more disrespectful to everything Red stood for had they gone the Jeremy Bentham route and preserved his remains for permanent display in the vestibule of the stadium.

For a while, I was looking forward to the new season of Mind of Mencia. I saw his stand-up show, Take a Joke, America about 5 years ago. I've been watching his Comedy Central show since it came on the air. But then I saw the commercials for the season premiere. And it reminded me that there's a lot to be said for the cliche that timing is everything.

I think at this point, every joke that can be (and probably should be) made about that astronaut that went on the cross-country spree of insanity. It's too bad for Carlos that his show was on hiatus and he didn't get a chance to beat that to death with the rest of the media when it happened. But it would have been far better to let it go than to cram it into a season opening episode three months after the fact like a little "dee-de-dee" (sorry to steal his catch phrase) trying to force the round peg into the square hole.

I said all that because I'm running the risk of making that same mistake tonight. It's been nearly two weeks since the Falcons traded backup quarterback Matt Schaub to the Houston Texans. I really don't know why I care, but this trade seems like a mistake for both teams.

It seems like the Texans made this move so that they'll never have to hear commentators rip them for passing on Reggie Bush and Vince Young. As bad as the Mario Williams move looks now (I am still not willing to say this was a wasted pick after only one season, give him another year or two before the verdict is delivered), it's still a million times better than giving a guy with 2 career starts a $48 million dollar deal over 6 seasons. Fortunately for the Texans, only $7 million is guaranteed.

I think my favorite line from that link was Schaub's agent referring to this deal as "a real contract." That's the guy I want to represent me. Where did he go to business school? DeVry? I bet he's the type of guy who calls business school "B-school" in casual conversation.

The real problem here is that the Texans have been around now for five full seasons and they show no real signs of improvement as a franchise. It seems like the team faces an either/or decision every year and they choose poorly every time. It's actually kind of amusing, it must be what non-Celtics fans and people who aren't consumed by a bitter hatred of Danny Ainge see when they look at his tenure as the Celtics GM. If the Celtics come out of this draft without landing a franchise savior, it might just be the NBA's version of that Mario Williams pick.

This is a mistake for the Falcons, too. They're rolling into a season with plenty of turmoil (new coach, Vick's trick water bottle and the rest). And they have no reliable backup for Ron Mexico. A wild rumor has them considering bringing in Drew Bledsoe, which has disaster written all over it. So Atlanta is one injury or ill-advised carry-on item away from a lost season. What a shame it would be if they missed the postseason again.

I don't see the logic of this move from the Texans standpoint. I haven't seen a lot of Matt Schaub, but then again who has? After only two starts, who knows what he can deliver in the long run? He seems like a younger David Carr with less mileage on him. Considerably less mileage, what with the fact that David Carr gets hit more than some tackling dummies every week. But if David Carr wasn't the answer in Houston, I don't see how Matt Schaub will make them any better.

As for yesterday's Final Four games, I was right about Ohio State and wrong about Florida. Too bad. I hate Florida even more now than I did yesterday. With any luck Ohio State will beat them by a ludicrous, inconceivable margin. I was right, I think, about the Oden-Hibbert matchup. When the two of them were on the floor together, however brief that time may have been on account of foul trouble, it was very interesting. There might be some hope for the NBA yet.

I don't know if you got a chance to see any of the Detroit-Miami game, but it was very depressing. Miami took a 9 point lead into the fourth quarter and murdered it. Jason Williams is not remotely qualified to run an offense in the NBA. Detroit went to a full-court press, with Richard Hamilton guarding the point. And Miami's offense went into cardiac arrest. Antoine Walker was forced to bring the ball up when Gary Payton was in the game. And I was, in all fairness, disappointed with Toine's performance too, but maybe if Riley played him more he'd be less rusty.

If a full court press by Richard Hamilton destroys your offense, it might be time to consider a new sport. I never would have believed a veteran team would be so mystified by a simple tactic like the full court press. After all, elementary school kids are taught the full court press. And a "coaching legend" like Pat Riley had absolutely no answer. Miami might as well have had four guys on the court, for all the good Williams did there.

God help the Heat in the playoffs. I never thought Dwayne Wade's ability to bring the ball up against the full court press would be the aspect of game the team missed the most. I figured it would be much harder to make up for his scoring and his defense than for a rudimentary skill like handling Richard Hamilton pressuring the ball. Not that I could bring up the ball against Rip Hamilton, but he's not exactly a fearsome defender.

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...

I'm not as depressed as you might think today. Based on last season (which was the single greatest season in the history of modern relief pitching, at least by the standards that made the late not-so great Dick Radatz a regional media icon) and the title of this site, you might think that the local authorities had to talk me down from the ledge this afternoon. Jonathan Papelbon has returned to the bullpen for the Boston Red Sox, and the American League East is clinched with only 162 games remaining.

I bet those of you who read this space on a regular basis are expecting me to provide a cynical take on this move, to harsh the proverbial buzz of Red Sox Nation. I was fully prepared to do so, until I read this piece in the Washington Post. Jonathan Papelbon and Terry Francona were losing sleep over the turmoil in the bullpen. Can you imagine? The horror, the horror. I don't think I can summon up the energy to go about my daily activities until I find out with absolute certainty that the two of them are no longer running for the shelter of their mother's little helpers.

If you read the Boston Herald (and you do so at your own risk), you will find inspired analyses like this, praising Papelbon as a lights out closer and celebrating his new old role. On ESPN, there was some speculation that this could cause consternation in the Bronx. Somehow, I can't help but think that if Big Stein and Joe Torre are soiling their union suits, it has more to do with general issues of incontinence and less to do with the dazzling return of the greatest closer of all time after 102 career innings.

Looking at Papelbon's career stats, he had a very good season in terms of numbers last year. But he also blew six saves. At the end of the day, I am not too worried about his impressive WHIP or .OPS allowed. Maybe I'm just a casual observer and not a hard core baseball man. Or maybe I'm the world's oldest 27 year old. But I don't dig on stats as the measure of a baseball player. At the end of the day, all that matters is who wins it all. And as much as I hate the little hustling overachiever David Eckstein, I have a lot more regard for him than I do for Papelbon because he submitted a clutch performance in a World Series.

I am not the only person who isn't getting their hopes up for the return of Papelbon. Ken Rosenthal on FOX Sports does a nice job presenting all the questions swirling around this move. It is a fair point to speculate that the Red Sox are making a panic move here, because none of the stop gap solutions they imported this offseason showed any sign of panning out. After all, if they went into the season with Papelbon in the rotation and a gaping hole at the end of the game, Epstein would be running for his life from the fans and the media.

It can't be very encouraging for a Red Sox fan to consider all of the precautions the team plans to take with Papelbon. They're going to limit him to one inning appearances and keep him out of back to back games as much as they can. They aren't going to warm him up without putting him in the game. This is a long list designed to safeguard the arm health of a 26 year old entering his second major league season (the 17 appearances from 2005 don't count).

Hearing about these plans got me thinking about Mark Prior. He was another can't miss pitcher who burst onto the scene, but developed arm problems and for lack of a better term missed (at least to this point). Papelbon was supposed to be the future of the Red Sox rotation. Only 26 years old, with just over 100 innings pitched to this point and supposedly electric stuff, he was a bright beacon of hope to all the tools in the Nation.

His career is by no means over, as of today. But he's a 26 year old pitcher with a shoulder problem. So many things could go wrong. Either the joint isn't properly healed. Or he may develop a mental block, so he never unlocks his full potential. I wouldn't worry too much about the latter scenario, since it seems that his somewhat less than formidable intellect lacks the capacity to construct a mental block. But it's possible.

I think that this move to the pen and the talk about the precautions being taken is something of a smokescreen. After all, I'm not buying that closing is tougher on Pepelbon's shoulder than starting would be. As a closer he'll throw maybe 80 innings. As a starter, he'd throw somewhere in the vicinity of 200 innings. There are those who would place more emphasis on the stress of pitching the 80 innings while trying to hold a lead, but I'm not convinced. With proper warmup and the fact that Papelbon is not sufficiently intelligent to comprehend stress, it shouldn't be an issue.

Remember, Papelbon wasn't exactly dominant in his first spring training start. On the plus side, from the team's point of view, this calls a lot of attention away from the fact that every fifth game, the Boston Red Sox are going to be relying on Julian Tavarez to hold the fort. Between that and the fact that this team is relying on contributions from primetime players like Julio Lugo and JD Drew, I get the feeling that this is going to be a good year for Sedition in Red Sox Nation. Of course, I have been wrong before.

In other matters, I think Texas A and M got boned by the officials tonight. According to NCAA rules, as long as there is more than 4/10 of a second left on the clock, a team can catch and shoot off an inbounds pass. But one guy touching the ball on an inbounds pass 3 inches from the sideline managed to take 1.1 seconds off the clock. At that point, the officials might just as well have ended the game there, maybe buffed Coach Cal's no polish manicure. That would have been about as fair.

I must say that Memphis impressed me. I assumed that they were ripe to be upset even before the Sweet 16 when I saw the bracket. After all, who is left in Conference USA now, outside of a few branches of DeVry, ITT Tech and a University of Phoenix campus in suburban Kansas City (Kansas, not Missouri)? So, like almost every other observer, I laughed at Memphis. Plus, when has a Coach Cal team not underachieved in the tournament? I was amazed they were that close to Texas A and M down the stretch. I just wish the game could have ended without the controversy.

Also, I have to extend some sort of congratulations to Miami-Dade Community College. Their chess team recently upset Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Northwestern. Up until today, I didn't even know that there were formal intercollegiate chess competitions. I wonder what the nerds on the Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth or Northwestern chess team will experience when they return to their nerderies after losing to a community college. I bet they have to hand over their pocket protectors in shame.

Well, the first weekend of the NCAA tournament is over. And the bracket challenge disaster I predicted in the last post of last week not only happened, but happened twice over. I know I shouldn't do it, after the last 15 years of doing it, but I choose teams based on hatred or lack thereof and it kicks my brackets ass all the time. I picked Texas Tach to go to the Elite Eight because I hate BC and Georgetown. I picked Notre Dame to go to the Final Four because I hate Florida, Wisconsin and Oregon. And now my bracket needs teams from the NBA to lose, three of the original cast of MASH to die and four or five country wonders to occur for me to win.

For the record, I didn't really think that ND could win. I thought they were the first team that had a snowball's chance in the infernal region of beating Florida that I didn't hate. And even then I didn't like that pick. I love ND as a football school, but I've never been a big fan of their basketball team. I don't know why. But I think it has a lot to do with the fact that Mike Bray looks like a bad lounge singer with the slicked back hair and the mock turtleneck with the blazer. I just can't get behind the lounge lizard coaching the team. But I picked them, and they killed me.

And all of that was before Texas lost. That was a defensible pick, though. With the best single player in the tournament and a point guard that could play, they had a chance to get hot. Unfortunately, they didn't. But I'm not at the point in my life where I'm willing to forsake my hatred for the sake of a NCAA tournament bracket sheet. I am a sad, small, bitter, bitter man, but I'm fine with it, which makes me a good person.

One of the surprising stories of the tournament so far was the lack of an upset in the 5-12 matchup. Personally, I think there was an upset. When the officials swallowed the whistle as Virginia Tech played what resembled rugby more than basketball, that was an upset. Illinois got jobbed, and America's least coherent and honest columnist took entirely too much satisfaction in the defeat of his new mortal enemy Bruce Weber. By the way, can an Illini team that didn't deserve to be there in the first place actually choke? These are questions that trouble responsible writers, but not Jay the total fraud.

To be fair, Illinois could have been more aggressive offensively down the stretch. I understand that there is a natural impulse to go to your strong suit when you need to close out a game. Illinois played good defense, so they tried to take the air out of the ball, milk the clock and hope the 13 point lead was sufficient. And maybe it was a good thing for Brian Randle that the final foul was ignored. If he missed two more freethrows that would have tied the game, I shudder to think what the poor kid would have done to himself or the community at large.

At some point, it is probably as effective to sprint down the court and fire up a bad shot as it is to walk the ball up, run 25 screens, rotate the ball from side to side for 34 seconds and then take a bad shot. If you aren't scoring, you aren't scoring. Might as well be interesting while you're doing it. As far as the 9 turnovers VT forced, Brian Urlacher doesn't hack half as much to force a fumble in the NFL (a contact sport, for the record) than the VT press did. That loser the Grizzly Man experienced less contact in being mauled to death by a grizzly bear than the Illinois guards did in bringing the ball up court.

I was rooting for Illinois. I thought they deserved to win. I wish the refs called fouls on some of the VT contact, but that's life. But it got me thinking about something. And the Southern Illinois game vs. Holy Cross got me thinking too. Based on the score, the Holy Cross game was closer than the Virginia Tech game. Now does that mean Holy Cross was a better team and could have beaten Virginia Tech? The obvious answer is, hell no.

However, Southern Illinois likes to play tight defense and make the most of their opportunities on offense. That's how Holy Cross likes to play, which led to the tight game. Virginia Tech didn't play that way, Southern Illinois stifled VT and crushed them handily. But on the Southern Illinois-HC game, it was clear as day that SIU was much, much, much more athletic than Holy Cross. If they ran, the cross between Tarantino, Boo Radley and the Missing Link would have been gasping for air and out of the game.

So my question is, is it better to stick to your style or adapt and exploit the opponent's weaknesses? I think it's better to adapt, but SIU could have easily adopted a run and gun approach, lost discipline and fallen apart. Plus the first two paragraphs of this post are all about what an idiot I am and the shambles that once was a proud bracket challenge entry. Take that with my record for picking games (I have to count the SIU-HC game as a loss, since I predicted a bigger victory and the humiliation of double zero, neither of which happened).

By the way, I found out that Danny Ainge's birthday is March 17. I would wish him many happy returns, but I hate him. But what kind of Mormon is born on the biggest drinking day of the year? You know there's no way the stars were smiling on him. That's why he's mad such a shambles of the Celtics. He was born unlucky.

PS - I may seem insensitive in ridiculing the Grizzly Man, but he got what he deserved. It may be bad karma, and tempting fate, but that's how I feel. If grizzly bears are going to maul me, they're going to have to come to my apartment and maul me here. I'm sure as hell not going to go out and hang out with apex predators like they were my buddies.

PPS - I appreciate the Anti-Jay people for reading me and commenting on these posts. But I must ask the question, what has Boise done to you? I've never been to Boise, and God willing, I never will. But I'm pretty sure that the good people of Boise don't deserve him. He needs to go. Chicago is the best city in the world not named Boston, and he is a blight on its landscape. How about banishing him to Siberia? Or a research station in the Antarctic? While we're dreaming, let's dream big.

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.

We have a slight delay before we can get to the tool of note segment. Bill Simmons shamelessly picked Holy Cross to defeat Southern Illinois. Perhaps it comes from living under the blanket of smog which, according to Ray Bones in Get Shorty is the reason for the beautiful sunsets in LA. Or maybe it comes from attending a school starved for any athletic achievement since Tommy Heinshon tore it up on Mt. St. James back in the 1950s.

I have seen Southern Illinois play. And Holy Cross has more chance of winning the BCS national championship than they have of winning this game. Watching the Holy Cross game against Bucknell, I got a reasonable idea of the strengths and weaknesses of Tim Clifford. In my stream of consciousness post on Friday last, I described him as a cross between Quentin Tarantino, Boo Radley and the Missing Link. I stand by that. There is no way he can handle Randal Falker on the SIU front line.

Falker gave Patrick O'Bryant a tough time in last year's MVC Championship game. O'Bryant was a lottery pick in last season's NBA draft. Tim Clifford won't be a lottery pick, unless of course you mean the state lottery. Or Ainge is even worst than I think and overreacts when the Cs lose out in the lottery. And the idea that the RA can handle Jamaal Tatum is totally preposterous.

People can sell the MVC short all they want, and against the power conferences you might be right. But Holy Cross comes from the Patriot League. So Bucknell caught Kansas by surprise a couple of years ago, and statistically speaking the odds of lightning striking the same place twice are no worse than the odds of it striking at all. Nevertheless, if HC loses this game by less than 15, I will regard it as a minor miracle.

But enough about Holy Cross, it's time for the tool of the note. I hadn't really expected to do this, but this mess has gone on too long. I am sick to death of Lance Briggs. At first, I thought it was going to be a big loss for the Bears when he demanded to be traded or else. Now I'm not so sure.

First of all, how do you whine about $7.2 million for one year's work and expect the fans to sympathize with you? Maybe you would command a lot more guaranteed money on the open market, but most of the fans would play for the Bears for $7.20. And yes, you could get hurt and risk losing the $20 or $25 million in guaranteed money, but you could also slip in the shower or hurt yourself working out or fall on some ice while you're holding out.

I liked Lance Briggs before this situation developed. I was on his side as far as the franchise tag was concerned, but after he came out in the ESPN interview and started talking about taking out loans to sustain him through the holdout, I'm out. I'm sure Lance won't lose much sleep over losing my support. It is his right, and his choice, but there are a lot worse things than playing out a season on a one year deal worth the average of the top five salaries at your position.

Yes, he led the Bears in solo tackles this past season and went to his second consecutive Pro Bowl. But none of that justifies the massive ego he shows the world on his website and in his recent interviews. The highlight montage is depressingly narcissistic. And ordinarily I don't have a problem with massive egos (just look at my continual defense of Terrell Owens). But I usually like to see a little bit more to justify that ego than what Lance Briggs has turned in to date.

His numbers are good, but I can't remember a single defining postseason moment, and I watched every minute of the Bears loss to Carolina last year and the Super Bowl run this year. Terrell Owens, whose massive ego is undeniable and whom I have defended so often that a friend joked that I would probably defend him even if he came to the door and kicked me in the groin, has two major defining postseason moments. First, there is the huge TD catch that beat the Packers when he was with the 49ers (which also redeemed him from several big drops that day). The other is the day he totally outplayed Super Bowl MVP Deion Branch when Philly lost to NE.

I think the real villain in the Lance Briggs saga is his agent and well known archtool, Drew Rosenhaus. For the record, I am aware that Rosenhaus is also TO's agent, and Rosenhaus has an extremely well-publicized record of getting big deals for his clients through (or in spite of) this type of saber rattling. It's just that I find myself wondering whether he could get his clients good contracts without getting his face on TV so often.

And in the interest of fairness, I had to go to TO's website. I know those of you who read this probably won't believe this, but it's my first visit. I have to say, as much as I love to watch him play football, TO sucks as a rapper. But then, I'm not the best judge of music. I think it might be good thing that BIG and Tupac died young. Make no mistake, the manner in which they departed was deplorable, and I do not condone violence in any way, shape or form. I just think that people who look at what might have been and say why not (with apologies to the late Robert Kennedy) are a little bit optimistic for my taste.

Listen to any track off The Chronic (especially Deep Cover, my personal favorite) and tell me it doesn't kick ass on Dre's later work. And can you tell me that asking a little mama to show you what she's got in ever so slightly different ways over and over is an artistic achievement on par with Hard Knock Life, but I must thank Shawn Carter for not murdering everything moving since his subsequent material (only part of his situation) did not improve on that particular track. Very, very, very few people keep getting better with age in any profession.

The list of people who lose whatever fleeting, ephemeral quality that makes them phenomena is a mile long. Dennis Leary was the first to bring this trend to my attention in No Cure For Cancer, and it applies to him too. What has he done that was as funny (but he does great things for fallen firefighters and their families)?
But I digress. After all, no one comes to Sedition in Red Sox Nation for their perspective on the history of hip hop, or at least I hope they read me for other reasons like my gentle sarcasm and kind words for tools.

PS - In case you care, my response to the Owens kicking me in the groin joke was that I would, and I'd assume I had done something to deserve it. Unfortunately, I can't promise that I would be as eloquent as George C. Scott in Man Getting Hit By Football from one of the all time great Simpsons episodes. And I'm sorry if I misspelled the name of Torey Thomas (HC point guard and RA) in last Friday's post. I would wish I had a better excuse than laziness if it were more important to me that I knew his name in the first place.

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.

Why are Bucknell and Holy Cross playing for an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament? These teams are horrible. I've watched better high school teams. I think Holy Cross combs the refuse of the worst parties in the known universe (on Caro St.) to get players 4-12 for every game. And somehow Bucknell is worse. I hate to break this to HC fans, but if Keith Simmons were any good (as opposed to the best player in the Patriot League and future third best player in the suburban Boston over-40 They Call Me Rubberneck League), he'd be playing in a better conference, like the MAAC or the NESCAC.

Meanwhile, Bucknell started a guard who cultivated an Ed Grimley look. I don't know if he lost a bet, but I hope to God that he isn't doing this because he thinks it's a good look. It tells you something about the quality of the team involved that the announcers just wondered how you get the vernacular pronunciation out of Worcester. And one of them just said "Pahk the cah in the pahking lot." Good. Make light of the accent, jackass. It's not my fault the game sucks and the teams suck. Drop dead.

If you haven't had a chance to watch any of this game, the paint is currently being dominated by a guy who looks like a cross between Mungo from Blazing Saddles and the Golem of Prague with as little athletic ability as you could imagine a college basketball player possessing. He flows to the ball like Randy from My Name is Earl doing the robot while Mr. Roboto plays in the strobe-lit room, only in real time and under normal lighting conditions. I'm only exaggerating slightly when I say that 00 for Holy Cross looks like a cross between Quentin Tarantino, Boo Radley and the Missing Link.

Then there is the festival of uggos that these schools parade out as cheerleaders. I think my watch stopped when ESPN2 showed the Bucknell group. I understand that these schools aren't drawing from the same talent pool that a USC or Florida has available, but even still...yikes. I wouldn't want to run into them in a dark alley. To say nothing of the line of but-her-faces in belly shirts with "Beat Bucknell" spelled across their beer guts.

I'm guessing at least one of these girls will be rejected with the six simple words: "I'm not gay, but I'll learn" at some point in her life. With apologies to Sir John Gielgud, the butler from Arthur, but you'd think you'd have to frequent bowling alleys to meet women of the same quality as the type haunting the Hart Center tonight. I almost feel sorry for the third-tier Congressmen who will make these young ladies their third-rate mistresses in the next decade.

Holy Cross point guard Torry Thomas is a resident advisor on his floor. Can you imagine Magic Johnson, Oscar Robinson, Pete Maravich, Larry Bird or any legitimately great college basketball player being an RA? Maybe I'm biased because my college RAs included a girl so nice that her administration was ironically referred to as a reign of terror (what can I say? I rolled with a dangerous crowd), a hippie that was one more story about Phish tour away from a grim death, an Asian girl who was afraid of her own shadow and the girl who is forever remembered as the woman who dated Bed Head, whose nickname ought to be self-explanatory. I don't know how I ended up with so many female RAs, maybe the school figured I was less likely to burn the dorm down that way.

I have to sign off here, as the announcer just informed me that a rebound was manly. If I hear Linda Cohn ask if Bob Knight is as talkative as he was last night in her best coy manner one more time I am going to storm the set in Bristol like Maximus busting out of the tunnel in the Spanish arena. Instead of shouting "Are you not entertained," I'll be shouting "You're With Me, Leather."

Before I go, I have this to say to the Bucknell coach: "I'm not buying any goddamn Bushmills I don't need Flannery." I'm sorry, but the guy looks like he was scared out of his wits one day and never quite recovered. By the way, that is a quote from State of Grace, a movie every man in America should see, especially with St. Pat's coming in a week and a day.