Busted

My bracket is in ruins. Well, that didn't take long.

It's March, and that means that once again I pay attention to college basketball. As I've noted before in this space, I'm not much of a basketball fan. There's just something about a sport where "good defense" consists of limiting your opponent to scoring only once every sixty seconds that just seems wrong to me, and on the whole I'd rather watch football. Or hockey. Or baseball. Or any number of other sports, up to and including European Cup soccer and Olympic curling, for that matter.  Even Iron Chef.

But once a year you have to get into the spirit of things and fill out your bracket for March Madness. And I did. I picked teams I'd heard of before. I picked teams where people I know went to school. I picked teams from places I've lived, places I'd like to visit, and places that were playing schools from places that should secede.

And while a few of them won, it is amazing to me here in the middle of the second day of the tournament - not even 3pm Central time - how forlorn my once proud choices are looking.

But you know, I'm okay with that.

This means that the Ohio Bobcats and the University of Northern Iowa Panthers and the Cornell whatever it is that the Cornell teams are called are all moving on. It means that Florida and Notre Dame are not. And all is right with the world.

Of course this also means that Cornell will be playing Wisconsin sometime soon, and my elitist Ivy-League background will be exposed to all of the people here in the Badger State who bother to ask me about it. Yes, they were our Bitter Rivals back in the day, but that only counts in-house and even then I couldn't get worked up enough about it to remember what they were called. "Them," I suppose. Whatever - it's not often the Ivy team actually wins a meaningful sporting event against non-Ivy competition, so I will be cheering for Them, even if it means being outed as "Not From Around Here."

I won't watch the game, of course - not unless they give those guys skates and pucks and tell them to actually hit each other if they want to commit a foul - but I'll keep track on my bracket.

Go, Them.