It's Begining to Look a lot like....

Tournament time. Yessir, March Madness is rapidly approaching. Less than one month from now the single greatest betting extravangza will be starting. This year opening weekend coincides with St. Patties which means that we could be seeing record amounts of drunkenness on college campuses. I will of course be patrolling the bars for the good of the blog collecting information and stories...much like Bill Simmons. Hopefully by the end of the experience I can answer such questions as "Does anyone living in an urban area have a similar mustache to Adam Morrison?", "Does anyone purporting to have a modicum of a soul like Duke?", "How many UConn players will be arrested during their opening game?", "Where's the bathroom? I shouldn't have had that last Irish Car bomb". Well that last one is less of a question and more of a prediction.

One of the brewing debates this year for college basketball is, how many bids to give to Missouri Valley Conference (MVC)? Currently they are slotted for 5 according to ESPN.Com's bracketology and Sportsline.Com's brackets. That's right a mid-major conference receiving more bids than the PAC-10, ACC, and Big 12 (each currently slotted to have 4). Pretty bold but the MVC is no longer the bastion of only the Fighting Souloukies (Southern Illinois) or even Creighton (Is that a real school? How do you come up with the name Creighton? Is some sort of bet involved there?). The MVC has been incredible this year. Currently they are the 6th rated conference according the RPI. With less than 2 weeks to go before conference tournaments start up, the question of the MVC and other bubble teams will be fun to watch.

Random Thoughts:
Why does ESPN have to cover every one of Bonds' utterances? Is it really news if he declares that he's retiring in 2012, maybe? Maybe if he'd challenge Lynn Swann in the PA. Governor’s race he doesn't hit 30 HRs in spring training but otherwise? Why do I remember the NBA all-star game itself being more fun? Maybe because in the old days players passed or showed off that they had some sort of fundamental skills. It's looking more and more likely that Chad Pennington's days are numbered in Jets-land which means three out of first four draft picks could well be quarterbacks. That of course paves the way for the Cleveland Browns to decide whether to draft the Burger King or Pepsi Machine.