Time to Go Dancing

March Madness is upon us. Like everyone else, I will make a crude attempt to win money by insanely trying to predict the outcome of 64 games. I will get to that in a second. While a college football playoff would not yield the excitement that the first weekend of the basketball tournament does, there would still be so much interest in the determination of college football’s champion that it would make the last two weekends of the NCAA tournament look like a Boy’s Club Round Robin tourney. I know this is a ridiculous request, but please someone get me a football playoff so I can essentially waste the entire month of December breaking down the matchups and watching the games.

Okay on to the bracket…the quick hits:

1. First Round Upsets: UNC-Wilmington over George Washington, Southern Illinois over West Virginia, NC State over Cal, San Diego State over Indiana, UAB over Kentucky, Wisconsin over Arizona, Montana over Nevada and Northern Iowa over Georgetown
2. Second Round Upsets: Arkansas over Memphis, San Diego State over Gonzaga, Marquette over UCLA and Washington over Illinois
3. Sweet Sixteen Upsets: LSU over Duke and UNC over Tennessee
4. I have Texas, Kansas, Connecticut and Ohio State in the Final Four
5. The swing games for me are Michigan State/UNC and Kansas/Pittsburgh.
6. I’m interested to see how Tennessee does in this tournament. They were out early in the SEC tournament which should help them get there legs back and everyone is all over them for being a #2 seed. The strange thing is that I have them in the Sweet Sixteen, but they could just as easily lose to Winthrop in the first round.
7. If John Brady doesn’t get LSU to at least the Elite 8 this year or next, he should be fired. That team has three NBA lottery picks on the roster (Glen “Big Baby” Davis, Tyrus Thomas and Tasmin Mitchell). With that kind of talent, the expectations should be much higher than they are in Baton Rouge.