It's maaaad-ness!

Ah March ...

(Thoughts of Spring, right? ...Yeah. Don't get me started on the fact it snowed ALL DAY today ...AGAIN!)

...I was a little leery of the NCAA tournament and filling out brackets this year considering home ownership, an iPod, a burglary and good primetime TV, among other things, kept me from following the college basketball closer than usual this year. Nonetheless, I caught quite a few games during the conference tournmanents last weekend, the brackets were unveiled and the once again, the madness hit me ...

... all week I kept an eye on 'Sportscenter' for some extra insight and here I was last night pouring over the stats on ESPN.com and filling out my bracket and a bracket for my hermit crab, Herman Hermit (because, yes, at my workplace anything that lives and breathes is allowed to enter the office pool as long as U.S. currency is paid in full.) ... and oddly enough, for days I've been talking to my cohorts about how wide-open this year's tournament is and suggesting that perhaps Duke and Connecticut were overrated. But lo and behold, as I scrolled through each game and filled out the brackets, who do I have playing for the national championship but Duke and Connecticut. (For the record, Kansas and Boston College fill out the Final Four in my bracket; Kansas and Ohio State fill out the Final Four in Herman's bracket.)

* * *
And what a day it's been ...

There were statistics thrown about throughout the day, something like 4 billion dollars worth is lost in productivity at the workplace during March Madness. Yeah. My office did it's part in contributing to that today ...

... not only did a couple of us head to one of the many sports bars for the lunch hour, the television was on and tuned to the games, and CBS Sportsline was tuned in to the live updates on our desktops. Our eyes were glued to the TV duringthe waning seconds of that classic Boston College-Pacific game, as well as the Tennesee-Winthrop game. Few of us were surprised when UW-Milwaukee upset Oklahoma, but the handful of Marquette grads in my office weren't too happy when they gave up theirs to Alabama ... Not to mention I had the Golden Eagles penned into the Sweet Sixteen ...

Oh. The fun. ... Can't wait to do it again tomorrow.