| 11th Annual Great American NCAA Basketball Pool (be afraid, be very afraid) |
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| Greetings fellow Bracketologists. Day 1 is now in the books. As always, quite an opening day. Nothing matches the opening round of the NCAA's. Buzzer beaters, upsets, high drama. Take the end of that California - NC State game where they traded back to back "3"s in the waning seconds. Or favorites Dayton and Creighton (Hey! They rhyme!) going down to defeat. Just unbelievable. Standing at the top of the heap after the first day is none other than famed New England radio personality Sebastian who nailed an amazing 15 out of 16 games. I guess all that stuff he says at his website is true afterall! Yeah, um, more on him later because you may notice a familiar name charging hard down his back in a 5 way tie for second place as we take a quick check of the leader board: |
| Steve Cutforth ALMOST violated the "no stupid abbreviations" rule with his use of "PGH" to indicate his eventual champion "Pittsburgh." Now while "PGH" is not a generally accepted abbreviation for Pittsburgh, I must confess that it IS however instantly recognizeable as to what it refers to, which is my bottom line. Like I've always said in the past, when I'm grading a hundred something sheets I don't want to have to stop and pause to try and think who you meant. But in Mr Cutforth's case we will cut him some slack. |
| Now if you REALLY want to talk about folks who deserve to be in the hall of shame, lets talk about Sebastian. I''ve had a few comments from folks as to how I could let Sebastian into the pool again this year. For those who don't know, Sebastian is the host of the "Sebastian Sports Radio Program" (M-F from 3-6 pm on Sports Radio 640 AM in |
| Well, he may look a bit like Churchill, but ya gotta admit thats one cute little feller right there |
| Springfield and Sports Radio 1300 AM in New Haven) and unfortunately for him I happen to be one of his regular callers ("Greg from Chicopee"). Well, when my wife had her baby in January, I emailed out a link to some photos of Matthew (pictured at left) that I had put on the internet and sent it to everyone in my address book ... including Sebastian. Well, next time I'm on the air he begins to tell me how he got the email and how all parents think their babies are cute, but they aren't and that all babies arel ugly ... including mine! What the???! Now truthfully, I think all babies look like Winston Churchill but thats besides the point. So now everytime I call he always greets me with "Hey Greg ... hows that ugly baby of yours?" Um, yeah ... that is NOT going over too well with the wife. Let me tell ya. Good thing you're not marching in the Holyoke St Patrick's Day Parade on Sunday Sebastian, 'cause I don't think I coulda guaranteed your safety. If you want to give him a piece of your mind about this (or anything else really) give him a call at 1-800-736-4640. |
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| And, uh, speaking of the Holyoke St. Patrick's Day Parade, because of it I will be gone most of the weekend (Heckling the runners ar the road race on Saturday and the actual parade on Sunday), so there may be a wee bit of a delay in updates and that stuff this weekend. Send me an email if you have any questions or you can post a question on the message board. And if there are scoring discrepencies, let me know asap. |
| Well, lets get down to business, specifically the part of this pool that everyone dreads where the doors are opened to one of the NCAA's most loathsome institutions, The Hall of Shame, as we enshrine a whole new class of entrants for the 2003 season. First off, let me just say that "stupid abbreviations" were few and far between this year. Part of had to do with the pairings themselves as there was no opportunity to repeat last years fiasco where McNeese State played Mississippi State and a number of folks just wrote "MS" in that slot. There were a few folks however who are deserving of some attention in this regard: |
| Same goes for all those who simply wrote "X" for Xavier. Instantly recognizeable, so it makes the cut. And the fact that my boss's boss, Tom "Capo de tuti Capo" Jabs, was one of those folks, well, that in no way influenced my call on the "X" issue. So there. |
| This year we're unveiling a new category for all the amateur comedians who joined the pool. Ya see, alot of folks take the time to write cute little comments on their sheets in the various fields like "Department" and "Phone" and the like. Yeah, yeah, yeah .... real funny. For instance, lets take returning champion Chris "C Mac" McGurrin who thinks he belongs to the "Champ!" department. Or Corinne "as in Queen of mean" Watterworth who apparantly works in the "Department : Store." And I won't even tell ya what my buddy Screamer put. Along the same lines, we have another category of merry pranksters known as "the money faxers". Now as you may be aware, many folks end up faxing in their sheets to me. No problem there (right, Andy?). Well, some of them also like to fax me their money. Duane "War and" Pease faxed me a $10 bill. Very clever Duane (by half). But thats nothing though compared to Keith "Brill Cream a little" Daleb "will do ya" who faxed me four dollar bills and four quarters. Yeah, the money faxers. They're a breed apart. |
| Another category is for those renegades who try to enter using their own sheet. As my daughter so correctly pointed out to my friend "Starvin" Kevin Garvin when he tried to use a sheet from AOL.Com ... "RULE #4! RULE #4!" Thats right ... "Rule #4" ... "You must use my sheet." So poor Garv. I get the call at work that hes at my house but hes got the wrong sheet. He tries running some jive by me about how it looks just the same, blah, blah, blah. Well, I had the Mrs print him off some of mine and I had him do them over. Life's unfair that way, Garv. Same thing with Rosanne "Spanky" McFarland who actually brought in a page from the newspaper. Um, no. And then we have the curious case of the Ellison Neilson law firm. Two members of the firm Craig "You''ll shoot your eye out kid" Antas and Brian "The Sleuth" Suth both were out of town on business this week and faxed me in some bootleg sheet from God knows where. So, the Evil Commissioner was left to transfer their picks onto my sheet. Now since these two guys were rookies they are automatically on probation, so this violation technically constitutes their second strike. One more and they're out. Hey, speaking of which .... The next category we have is the "Hans Blix Proofreading Category" for those entrants who need to do a little better when it comes to inspecting their sheets. First up we have the aformentioned Mr Suth who felt so strongly that Stanford would beat San Diego that he also had them win the UConn - BYU game. Luckilly I'm a little better than Hans Blix, so I spotted this before the deadline. Same thing with Peter Parsons "The Spectacular Spiderman" who didn't pick anyone in the Indiana vs Alabama game. Not so fortunate was Margaret Poirier who failed to pick two 2nd rd games. Ouch! I didn't catch that one until this morning. And then we have Dave Matz "apple sauce." . Dave, the 1997 pool champion by the way, handed in his sheet and, kidding around, asks me "everything filled in okay?" Well, I look down and what did Dave do? He had Kentucky and Louisville in the finals. Okay. No problem right? But thats it! No champion!!. But luckilly for Dave I spotted that one too. Not that it mattered: he picked Louisville. |
| 15 - Sebastian (Ugly Mike is tied for last by the way) 14 - Lauren "You said WHAT about my brother??" Dennehy Nancy Hills #1 Jankowski/Dauphin #2 Deb McGuigan #2 Brenda Patterson "New Jersey" |
| Click here for complete standings. |
| First, we've got to start with long time pool participant Andy "Just the fax, ma'am" Marquart who somehow faxed his sheet to the wrong fax number. Unfortunately this wasn't discovered until about 12:30 yesterday, after games had begun, so we were unable to accept his sheet. Though ineligible we'll be tracking Andy's score in the standings |
| SHOCK AND AWE!! |