Tuesday, April 03, 2007

He Shoots.........He Misses........again


I know and care little about college basketball.

Correction - I know and care little about basketball. Period.

Being 6'2" in 8th grade, everyone assumed I'd love to play the sport and would be good at it. I loathed it. And I sucked at it. I'll just have to imagine they were connected. Hand/Eye coordination wasn't my thing. Not only that, I had already tried football and baseball to near disastrous results. So I got signed up for basketball too. I was 0 for 3.

For some reason, I love the fact that everyone assumes 2nd graders know the rules off all these sports. They just send you out to play with no clear direction and then tear you down when you fuck up. It was completely demoralizing. I don't and can't believe I was the only kid out there that didn't know how to complete a double-play. For g-d's sake, we were still hitting balls off the tee!

So walking/running down court while dribbling a basketball? Forget it! I had no idea when and why players would go to the foul line - since I had no idea what constituted a foul. Sports for children is insane.

Yet like any game of chance, yearly I get roped into the NCAA picks for March Madness. I would never put down money to do this. If I waste my money on gambling, I'll do it at the roulette table or bailing out Art Schlichter!

I can, however, actually dupe myself into thinking I read enough and know enough to make a good stab at it. You can see how well I did (click on above image to enlarge if so desired).

I know enough that betting on most any team from North Carolina can get you pretty far. I didn't see Duke losing in the first round. I bet they didn't either. So day one, I was pretty much out of it.

You will see that I did get Ohio State into the finals (and you see how well that ended up for me!) - but that was more out of loyalty than any knowledge-base on college basketball. Is Randy Ayers still coaching the Buckeyes?

I kid. ...but when did he get so butt-ugly?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll raise a glass to the boys this morning (of coffee, naturally). They had a great year and almost were the kings of bracketville. Alas, a phrase we OSU sport fans know oh too well: "maybe next year!"

Kris said...

I feel your pain with the sports in jr. high thing--I was 6'0" by 7th grade and also both sucked at and loathed basketball. I am pushing 40 and complete strangers will still come up to me and say, "Do you play basketball?" WTF?

Sorry to see my Bucks lose last night. At least the spring game is in 3 weeks and we can start thinking football again.