Tourney Time, Part One

I've always not-so-secretly wanted to let my sports geek run free around here, despite all my prattling on about songs and movies and books and God and whatnot. And there's no moment like the present to let him out of his cage for a little yard time. Sports certainly won't dominate this site for the next month, but with the NCAA tournament starting and baseball on the horizon, it will be claiming its fair share of the spotlight -- the 30-watt spotlight that is this blog, anyway.

First, I draw your attention to an article on ESPN today about the college hoops oddsmakers:

With less than 40 minutes until the brackets are made public...I was expecting the biting of nails and cigarettes smoked to the filter. Instead, Harper, Seba, Sinisi, O'Brien and White casually jot down stats or notes from their computer screens or shuffle through their stacks of team evaluation sheets. Each oddsmaker has his own system of making the numbers.

"You got to remember," Coach said, "we do this every day. It's pretty dull."

Not to me.

If, like most people, you have no idea how to judge 8-9 and 7-10 games between teams you haven't seen all year, the pointspread isn't the worst place to start your investigation. It's a useful factor to consider in every game, actually -- for instance, fifth-seeded Virginia Tech, which won a few big games, is only a 2 1/2-point favorite over Illinois, one of the last teams to make the cut this year.

If you're like me, your head's about to explode from analyzing the bracket as is. I apologize if this post hastens that explosion.