Even though baseball season has officially begun for every team by this point, I'm still thinking more about the Final Four than anything else right now. Of the four teams that remain, I hate all four of them. But since somebody has to win this thing, at least according to the rules of logic and probability, I guess I'd rather see Kansas win than any of the other finalists.

I hate Memphis because I hate John Calipari. I never really liked him when he coached U Mass back in the day and I haven't seen any reason to change my mind since. As for this Memphis team, they are dangerously close to proving that they actually matter. They beat Texas, who was legit this season, even though Rick Barnes isn't particularly awe-inspiring as a big game coach. That said, there still is the fact that Conference USA is still going through the proverbial seven years of famine of which the Bible spoke since Louisville, Cincy and the rest fled to the Big East.

I've never been a Carolina fan. Just because they're a step above (and infinitely preferable to the Cameron Crazies) Duke doesn't carry enough weight to make me like them. I will root for them whenever they play Duke, but other than that, I have no time for them. Nor have I ever been swept away by the "romance" of Tobacco Road. Perhaps if General Sherman could have foreseen how things would turn out he would have been more harsh and not lest harsh in his treatment of North Carolina during the Civil War. Plus I'm not entirely convinced that Roy Williams and the current mayor of Boston aren't doppelgangers.

I'm not entirely sure why I hate UCLA, it's just something I've always done. It might have something to do with the light blue uniforms (like UNC). I don't think it has anything to do with the tradition, generally speaking I admire tradition (Notre Dame and the Yankees come to mind). Maybe it's the fact that I think I hate everything from LA. Or maybe it's a lingering resentment against the school that gave us Kareem and Bill Walton.

I really hate Bill Walton, by the way, and I hate him more every time he opens his mouth. Yeah, he helped the Celtics win a title and come within a whisper of another back in the good old days. But he's a long winded d-bag who looks at the world through a strange perspective wherein his contributions to the basketball landscape and the English language are vastly overstated. It's too bad that injuries derailed what would have been an epic career, and it's a shame that he stuttered till he was 30, but why should I be punished for that?

I also remember way back when, when I was still a Celtics fan and the Cs and Nets were battling in the Eastern Conference finals. Walton was in the crowd in the Meadowlands, high-fiving Nets fans as though it were cool. Even though I have stopped being a Celtics fan as long as the Ainge era continues, I'm still not forgiving Walton. I probably never will.

Before I leave the topic of Bill Walton, I still want an explanation or clarification on his relationship to the Symbionese Liberation Army. Or at the very least a good explanation on what exactly the Symbionese are or were, from whom they needed to be liberated and why exactly kidnapping Patty Hearst was supposed to advance that cause. And as an aside, even though I am fairly conservative myself, I do not include his relationship to the Grateful Dead in my reasons for hating Walton. While I do not share their ideals, I do respect and enjoy their music.

I wanted to rip Bill Simmons for picking UCLA in his bracket column because I didn't think much of this team. Even though they'd made two (and now three) consecutive Final Fours, I just wasn't sold on this team. I guess I have no faith in Ben Howland because he's bald. I didn't go ahead and do so, mostly because my own history of brackets imploding quickly and spectacularly tends to shut me up for a change, at least on this particular subject.

Watching UCLA during this tournament, I have been wondering, like everybody else under the sun, what kind of pro Kevin Love will make. He is slow, and he hasn't been tested against the type of quality big man he'll face on the next level with any consistency, but I think he'll make it. Simmons compared a shot he made in the Pac 10 tournament to Bill Laimbeer's style of three point shooting. And I think that's the model for Love.

Love probably isn't as tough as Laimbeer was, and it's very unlikely that he will turn out to be the dick that Laimbeer was. But then this isn't the NBA of the 1980s, either. Expansion and internationalization have diluted the talent pool and virtually ended the concept of the legitimate enforcer in the NBA. The days of Rick Mahorn and Charles Oakley aren't coming back. That said, I can see Love having a long career where he averages 12 and 8 against an ever-shrinking population of true centers in the NBA.

It's strange that this should be the first time all four number one seeds have advanced to the Final Four under this format. These four teams have been dominant, but they all seemed just flawed enough that at least one should have fallen by now. UCLA maybe should have lost to Texas A & M, but for the bad call in the final minute that jobbed the Aggies, and Kansas came oh so close to losing to Davidson. But these four have survived, and it should be interesting to see how they match up with one another.

Kansas and Memphis seem almost like mirror images of one another. They have similar size and speed mixtures, but I think Kansas has better perimeter shooting and there is always the specter of free throw shooting for Memphis. Yes, they've shot much better from the line in postseason play than they did earlier, but the pressure increases exponentially at this point in the tournament. I think it will come back to haunt them, so they will probably advance.

UNC has great athleticism, but Roy Williams (even though he is only 3 years removed from winning it all) still strikes me as a guy who can find a way to choke and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at any given moment. And maybe I'm just convinced of this against all logic, but I'd really rather not have to rely on Tyler Hansborough in a big moment. Yeah, he has great numbers and he's at the top of the list of player of the year candidates, but I just have a bad feeling about this.

So if you're keeping score at home, based on everything I've said so far, it's Carolina over Memphis with Hansborough as your Most Outstanding Player.

In other matters, while I was surfing the ESPN site, I came across this piece by LZ Granderson on the NFL considering requiring players with long hair to tuck their hair into their helmet on the field. I don't see what the big deal is, it's not as though the league is mandating that players get hair cuts. And if it could protect a player, then they should go ahead with it. But if the policy doesn't come in, I'm fine with that too.

I linked to the piece because I couldn't help but wonder one thing. No matter how compelling one's case may or may not be, I think the argument is undercut from jump street when you lead off with a Waiting to Exhale reference. Even if you aren't making a sports argument. Even if you are for whatever reason making a Waiting to Exhale argument. Whatever claim to legitimacy, masculinity, street cred, or whatever other term you want to use for the same concept you had is gone as soon as you drop a Waiting to Exhale reference. You might just as well get a Subaru sport utility wagon and admit you've been gelded.

I know I promised my take on the Joe Torre situation with the Yankees, but a few things have come up to interfere with my blogging. Not the least of which is that I recently checked Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut out of the local library. I realize I just 86ed my street cred, since no one who is any one between the ages of 18 and 65 checks books out of the library. And if they do, it's certainly not to read them for edification. That said, if you get a chance and you are in the habit of reading, I highly recommend this book. It's short, it's funny and it offers some chilling insights into the way people act.

But Joe Torre will have to wait, because this afternoon, a more pressing concern is on my mind. This Sunday, two undefeated teams square off on the field beneath the half-assed open roof at Texas Stadium. They are the loathsome New England Patriots and the Dallas Cowboys. And, as you might expect, only one of these teams can emerge with a victory.

Conventional wisdom tells us that the Patriots will win the game. Rodney Harrison is back from his little slap on the wrist for taking illicit performance enhancing substances. Tom Brady is something like 29-2 on artificial playing surfaces in his illustrious career. The Patriots have steamrolled over every opponent they have encountered this season, and the pasting the Chargers put on the Broncos suddenly makes it look as though the Pats have faced a half-decent team. And on top of that, the Patriots have the second best player to wear number 81 on the field at Texas Stadium in recent memory on their side. No one can stand in the way of this juggernaut, and only a fool would believe that any team has a chance against them.

Call me a fool, but I think Dallas will win this game. Any reasonably competent high school algebra student can tell you that in accordance with the transitive property, since New England destroyed the Bills and Dallas barely escaped Buffalo with an improbable win, New England will beat Dallas handily. Alas, the transitive property works much better in a math book than it does in the real, honest to goodness, no fooling three dimensional world of pro football.

I am fond of quoting the Michael Douglas character from the Ghost and the Darkness who said that in prize fighting, everybody has a plan until they get hit. Dallas has been hit, and hit hard. They have shown that they can overcome adversity, silly mistakes and a hostile crowd in a strange environment and survive. New England has shown that they can get a lead and front-run with the best of them. No one has hit the Pats yet. And that is in large part due to the fact that the Pats have been great so far, but what will this version of the Pats do should the breaks start beating the boys?

Recently, a good friend sent me a cold analysis of the Notre Dame game vs. UCLA which pointed out that when the UCLA starting QB went down, they were forced to play a walk on with no game experience. Although the author's intent was to caution fans like me from getting to happy about ND's first win, it had the unintended effect of reminding me that New England knocked JP Losman out of their game against Buffalo and got to face the untested rookie Trent Edwards. Edwards had a few games to adjust before he faced the Cowboys. And yet Buffalo managed to score precisely zero offensive TDs against the Cowboys.

What worries me about the Cowboys is how their pass protection will hold up against the Patriots, or any team for that matter. I am not overly concerned with their ability to run the ball. The Patriots have a big defensive line and they have been able to push around lighter offensive lines to this point. However, Vince Wilfork will encounter a creature nearly as rare as the Loch Ness Monster in the form of Dallas guard Leonard Davis - a man actually bigger than Vince Wilfork and not on one of those TLC shows about an enormously fat shut-in who is moved from point to point by a piece of construction machinery. Dallas is much bigger on the offensive line than any team NE will face this season, and I'm not sure the Pats can handle it.

I think barring holding penalties or some sort of deal with the devil, Matt Light will be made to look ridiculous (at least in a professional capacity, he does his own work making himself look ridiculous off the field) by DeMarcus Ware and Anthony Spencer. No matter what Shawne Merriman and the pharmaceutical industry tell you, Ware is the best OLB in the game right now. And the Pats o-line just isn't ready for him.

And make no mistake about it, take any combination of three Patriots you want, and you'll still be a man and a half short of covering Terrell Owens. And for all the highlight reel TDs Randy Moss has caught this season, show me one play where he threw one block 1/3 as good as any TO threw to spring Creighton for the long TD in St. Louis. That's why TO is that much better than Moss, he's not as fast, but he's tougher, smarter and braver about going over the middle. He may drop a pass here and there on account of a lack of concentration, but I'd much rather have him than Moss any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

Dallas is a better team than New England. And unless Belichick has some sort of trick up his sleeve involving compromising photos of Tony Romo or illicitly obtained video of the Dallas coaching staff's signals, I'm confident that for once, right will prevail.

In other news, the Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians face one another for the right to represent the AL in the World Series. I really tried the last day or so to generate any interest, any hope of rooting for the Indians, and I can't. My hatred for the Red Sox is in no way diminished, and I still want them to lose every game by 100 runs, but I never wanted Cleveland to be the team facing them. As Victor Frankenstein said, it wasn't supposed to be this way. It wasn't supposed to be this way at all. It was supposed to be a thing of beauty.

And I run a risk doing this, as I try to avoid political matters in this space, but I have to rip some one for this. Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize? How is that possible? Maybe he has done some nice work on global warming whoring himself out to the Day after Tomorrow's promotional campaign and appearing in an Inconvenient Truth. But has that made the world a more peaceful place in any way, shape or form?

For instance, when Teddy Roosevelt won it, he got it for brokering the treaty that stopped the Russo-Japanese War. That is making the world more peaceful for his efforts. Al Gore and his UN group have gotten emerging economic powers like China and India to reduce what percentage of their greenhouse emissions? They've increased liberal guilt in the G8, but that's not Nobel worthy. Even if it were, how is it worth a peace prize? It might be worth an eighth grade environmental science bee prize, but not the Nobel Peace Prize.

Start spreading the news. The Yankees aren't quite dead, at least not for the moment. Maybe it was George Steinbrenner and his statement that Joe Torre would be looking for something to do with his time other than managing the New York Yankees if the team did not prevail in this series. Or maybe the announcers were right when they compared the Yankee offense to a 2 liter bottle of soda that had been shaken and shaken and was due to explode at any moment. Whatever it was, it happened. The Yankees won and they play again tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the Angels lacked the will of a warrior and fell victim to Humpty Dumpty and the Boston Red Sox. So now the Red Sox have a chance to rest and reset their rotation as they wait to see whether the Yankees can come back or the Indians will win their divisional series matchup. If this were another team with another group of players, perhaps one might worry that this lag time might dull their wits and adversely impact their readiness to play.

However, with this version of the Boston Red Sox, one needn't worry about any situation having an adverse impact on the wits of these players. In fact, with titans of the intellect like Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia and Jonathan Papelbon in prominent roles, one could fairly say that the wits are this team's least vulnerable spot.

It is a good thing that the Yankees came back tonight, if for no other reason than it redeemed Roger Clemens, at least until his next turn to pitch. Unlike a certain element of Red Sox fans, led by Bill Simmons, I harbor no resentment for the way Clemens left town. I don't believe athletes owe the fans a damn thing. Especially after winning a few Cy Youngs, having a couple of 20 win seasons and setting the MLB record for Ks in a game.

I'm not sure I'm ready to see Clemens retire. He's been such a big part of my memories of watching baseball for so long, I just don't remember a time when he wasn't pitching. I think Bill Simmons is just a total d bag. After all, he whines about the Yankees bringing Ronan Tynan in to sing God Bless America in the seventh inning stretch. Even if it is a long version, it's still the best rendition out there now.

Perhaps the Yankees should trot out 14 year olds who couldn't carry a tune if their lives depended on it, as the Red Sox have been known to do. Or maybe they could resurrect hard rock has beens who haven't had a decent song since Carter was President like Steven Tyler. Speaking of Aerosmith, I wish someone could explain their comeback. Outside of Dream On, their songbook is weak, to say the least. If Run DMC hadn't covered Walk this Way, would anyone have remembered them to stick a banal song on the Armageddon soundtrack?

To make a long story short, I still have hope that a team can step in and stop the Red Sox. And the Indians, even with Carmona and Sabathia don't seem to be the team to do it. I realize that Colorado and Arizona had success against Boston earlier this season, but that was a long time ago now. Plus I don't see the Red Sox folding like the Cubs. Nor do I see the Colorado lefties laughing at Ortiz and the other Sox lefties the way Howard and Utley did.

No matter what Red Sox fans tell you, you know that they fear the Yankees a little bit. 2004 is ancient history. Beckett might have been lights out in Game 1 against the Angels, but there's no guarantee that he can do it again. And if Matsuzaka pitches the way he did in Game 2, something tells me the Yankees might do a tad more damage than the Angels did. And Schill might want to sit this one out, unless he can whip up another ready-made "blood"-stained garment for the occasion.

As for this weekend's football games, Notre Dame finally won. Say what you want about the UCLA quarterback situation and their offensive ineptitude, but the Irish won a game no one thought they could. This could be the start of something interesting. I'm not holding my breath, but it's possible.

The Patriots continue to roll, but then who really thought the Browns would be the team to end the streak. The Chiefs and their subpar offensive line continue to drag my fantasy team down because they can't block for LJ. Far more vexing is the fact that I shall soon lose Travis Henry to his pending suspension for violating the league's substance abuse policy for the third time.

I'm not going to be the guy to pile on him when he's down. I just have to laugh a bit at his grand sense of timing. Henry was due to rotate out of the substance abuse program on October 1st, and he had to get high in September. I realize that a guy might need a little pick me up to take the edge of the whole 9 illegitimate kids situation. But it might have been nice if he thought of me and my fantasy team in all of this.

I think the real story of the NFL weekend came from the Seattle Pittsbugh game. It was a very good thing that the Seahawks were motivated by the outcome of Super Bowl XL. Otherwise the 21-0 beating the Steelers hung on them this afternoon would be quite humiliating. Perhaps this was some novel strategy of Mike Holmgren's. After all, letting Denver score a TD to get the ball back in Super Boxl XXXII worked so well, maybe letting Pittsburgh score three unanswered touchdowns today is just setting them up for some vague game to be played in the not too distant future.

I hate to see guys like Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun Alexander unhappy. They have done so much to elevate the profile of the NFL the way they whined about the officiating in that Super Bowl, they deserved better than what they got today. I think the only way to evaluate that officiating, which did leave a lot to be desired, is to ask whether Seattle would have objected had calls like that gone in their favor. If they would have been quiet if the calls went against Pittsburgh, then they should let it go at this point.

In tonight's Bears vs. Packers game, I was interested to hear John Madden mention that the Green Bay Packers expect AJ Hawk to start having a bigger impact on their defensive performance. Perhaps they need to find the man who wielded the ugly stick to such great effect on Hawk's wife, the sister of Brady Quinn and the fleabag who sported the trashy makeup and jersey tailor made to show her divided loyalty when the Irish met the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Fiesta Bowl two years ago. Surely he could motivate Hawk to perform up to expectations.

I have been defending Cedric Benson for so long now, it has become a habit. He did get plenty of carries tonight, for a change. And he didn't gain enough yards to justify his salary, or the Thomas Jones trade today, even though Jones didn't exactly reverse the rotation of the Earth in the Giants Jets game. He had some very promising runs, but he wasn't consistent.

I thought the offensive line was better tonight than they were against Detroit, and better than they have been in any game this season, for that matter. That said, this group still hasn't been good enough at any point in 2007. For what the Bears do in running the ball, relying on play action passes and using deep drops in the passing offense, the offensive line needs to stay on their assignments longer and generate more push up front. So I'm not ready to turn on Benson yet. I think I'll wait until Mariotti praises him.

Even though Griese finished with 2 TDs and came out on the winning end, I'm not thrilled about him as the Bears try to dig their way out the hole that they still haven't escaped. It was good to see both TEs involved in the game plan. The Bears still have albatrosses around their neck and will have them as long as the O-line underperforms, and they need much more production from the wide receivers. Tonight the best wide receiver on the team was Mark Bradley, and that just can't happen every game if the Bears are to get back to where they were last season.

For all the Bears did, and with Benson's decent numbers, I still need a very good game for Tony Romo and Terrell Owens tomorrow night. So I have a lot on the line, with the Yankees playing for their lives, with the Cowboys playing for my hopes of a Patriots humiliation and my fantasy life (I am one game back in a playoff race, with a log jam at 2-2). So I'll either be very happy, or very unhappy tomorrow. Even if the Cowboys are outstanding, but the Yankees fail, I will be disappointed, in case you care.

I should, while I think of it, address the recent comments on my posts. To answer Alle, yes Guerrero might have left on account of the pitch that hit him. But unless he needed some sort of critical operation, there is no reason a guy should leave a game his team desperately needed to win. If he can hold a bat, he has to stay in that game.

And to the author of the anonymous comment pointing out that I was mistaken when I attributed the song "Uncle Albert" to the Beatles instead of Paul McCartney, I would apologize, provided that I gave a damn. I guess the only reason the song impressed me as having any merit is that only one of the Beatles was involved in the project so the collective power of the suck factor couldn't taint the entire song. So my bad.

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.