And it begins…

The SuperBowl is great… opening day is awesome… but nothing is like the NCAA Tournament and especially the first four days and two rounds.  Despite CBS’s overt efforts to destroy the tournament with Billy Packer, Greg Gumbel and terrible switches between games, this remains the best days in sports overall.   Luckily Directv has saved us with their package but CBS continues to mess things up with their cutaway from the local game and blacking out the local on directv and CBS elimination of the midnight game for those who can’t get enough was a bad idea for hoops junkies. That’s my CBS rant for now … until they cutaway from Syracuse tomorrow, hopefully because they are up by 30 at halftime. 

I would list my bracket picks here but I’ve done too many and done them differently to look at all the variations.  I can assure you, with the obvious exception of Syracuse, I will take a little less chalk then our newly-embattled president, Barry.  Instead, I’ll focus on a couple of more interesting selections/pools.   As many of you know (and the reason you are on the site to begin with) you can check out this year’s version of the 23rd annual Countdown tournament on NCAA tab in the header.  For those past participants, I will eventually list all historical years on there at some point.  This pool is a draft of 20 players by 12 teams and score points based on the number of points the players score in the games in the tournament. 

The other pool and my first time as a participant is the “Survivor Pool”.  How does it work?  Pick one team each round that will definitely advance.  Sounds easy, except you can use the team again… so don’t get stuck with teams in the Final Four that you’ve used already or you are eliminated.  Pretty cool.  Like I need more opportunities to be interested in games.