How To Cure BBS (Broken Bracket Syndrome) So You Can Enjoy March Madness Again

Check out the best bracket left in this tournament.........Mine..........Sort of!

When you take the time to play lotto, and you are one of those people who plays the same numbers each time, you are passionately connected to each number as the lotto balls get called, unlike those quick picks where you can hardly remember your numbers. When hope is in the air, it hardly matters where those numbers came from, just that they have a chance to be called. Once the reality dons upon you (again) that you didn't win, you lose your connection to that piece of paper rather quickly.

Such is the nature of today's NCAA March Madness Tournament.  Every year is suppose to be that year in which we resurrect our sullen ego and reestablish our basketball prowess.  Back in the day, somebody you know was always the winner of these things.  Now, it seems to be the last guy or gal that you ever expected winning it all.  What is more frustrating is the method to their madness.

Some choose best uniforms, others lean towards hottest cheerleaders.  There hasn't been one of these quirky directions that has shown the power to win year after year, but the quirky road is clearly paved with more riches than the measured one that lead every analyst on ESPN (and Barack Obama) to wrongly choose Michigan State as the national champion..

If you would like to make the argument that this is a reason kids need to stay in college longer I might be inclined to take you up on that notion just for the sake of my Broken Bracket Syndrome (too many years of excessive indulgence in March Madness without a sniff of choosing one Final Four team).  Broken Bracket Syndrome (BBS) is sweeping the nation as we speak, causing millions who love basketball to throw away their useless lotto ticket of a bracket and to possibly lose a viewing interest in the proceedings overall.

From this day forward, I have found the cure for BBS.  Oddly, it derives from the same ideology behind the  lotto we play each week. The quick pick.

Thanks to PickMyBracket.Com (and photoshop), I have the closest thing to a perfect bracket that mankind will ever see in this era of parity in college basketball.

PICKMYBRACKET.COM allowed me to pick my most important statistic for victory and some quirky selection as the criteria for the final bracket it randomly produces. Each of my selections kept "Rebounding" as the number one statistic for victory on a list that included 3 other selections (offense, assists, defense).

For my brackets, the only thing I switched was the quirky option for bracket building, which included 4 choices; Mascot, SAT Scores, Co-Ed Hotness or Best Party School.  The chances of winning the NCAA bracket challenge is hard so hard, billionaire Warren Buffet put up a billion dollar prize for any one who creates a perfect bracket. With riches at stake, playing one bracket is about as smart as playing one lotto ticket

The 3 brackets I chose to follow all appeared plausible and calculated (kind of computer like), so I instantly appreciated the ease of creating something that I have unsuccessfully labored over for years. The only problem was that they each had a few problems.  In that dreaded first round, there are always games that could go either way.  On this website, the option to make minor adjustments to the random selections it generates does not exist (though I bet you it might next year).

For example, I am certainly a Colorado Buffalo fan who was happy to see them get in the tournament, but noticed that they received a life time achievement award with the #8 seed they garnered.  While it was easy to debate the worthiness of such a high seed for Colorado, it was hard to argue with the #9 ranking that their first round opponent, Pittsburgh received en route to a pummeling of the Buffaloes.

My gut said change that selection, but again,  the option did not exist.

My gut also said that UCONN had to be included in the Final Four of my bracket.  So, on this bracket (see above) I did switch out (photpshop) UCONN for Villanova (the computer selected Villanova instead). In actuality, UCONN was the only team that I can truly take credit for selecting.  The other teams were force fed by a computer that factored in party reputation as a key element in which team to choose. (Clearly CU was chosen over Pitt for this reason).

This year, my quick pick bracket gave me a reason to watch closely even after the first round was over.  If I had the foresight to put my money where my new found bracketology is, I might have made out like a bandit this year.  Sadly, this bracket will only give me remnants of my shattered ego back as I have finally risen to the top of my family bracket competition.

Does it matter that I essentially pulled the lever on a slot machine to win this time around?  Broken Bracket Syndrome is an illness that doesn't scoff at hope for a cure.

What Do You Get When You Make Professionals Play Amateur Sports? Shady Business.

While recognizing the wonderful accomplishment of 18 year old Colorado Avalanche rookie Nathan MacKinnon, it dawned on me that this 18 year old young man is pursuing his dream and proving himself capable against the best hockey players in the land. Baseball, tennis and any Olympic sport see's it the same way. Golf might force you to earn your mettle on the professional tour, but  will at least give you a chance to prove yourself against professional competition. The NFL and the NBA force professionals to behave as amateurs because they believe they know better.

What do you get when you force professionals to behave as college amateurs?  You get the Fab Five of Michigan, that's what.  

What we knew then is what we know now.  Some of these kids are simply too good to deny them an opportunity to get paid right away.  The only thing that we accomplish for a kid destined for the pro's is 6 months of more school and millions of dollars for the schools who get to use these athletes for at least one year (two if you play football).

If you get hurt in the process there is no insurance for your potential.  The school doesn't even have to honor your scholarship, which is a year to year contract that must be renewed.  Four years of guaranteed education is a reasonable exchange, but athletes who are worthy of going directly to the pro's could earn the value of a 4 year degree in the first year of a pro contract (with change to spare). The union was forced into this deal as a means of avoiding an NBA lockout.  It might very well be criminal, especially in the face of the absence of such a restriction in every other sport around the entire earth.

The only distinction between the sports that allow teenagers to compete for a job right away and the one's that do not is the mass percentage of black people who compete in the two banned sports.  Both the NBA and the NFL are complicit to the behavior because they, much like the college's who partake in the bounty, get the benefit of not overpaying for the uncertain potential of youth.

The history of drafting high schoolers has been a mixed bag. For every Kevin Garnett or Lebron James you have an Eddie Curry or Kwame Brown.  One year players are still dominating the landscape even if the year of play helps eliminate the guessing game of it all.  Essentially, the NBA has asked to be saved from themselves with this restriction.

So what is the end effect?

In the end, kids who are excellent athletes but horrible students get to compete in any sport that they are good at, except football and basketball.  In these sports, you will be blocked from a career by your lack of educational prowess.  Kids that succeed in school often have the support of one or two parents who keep them on track and teach them good study habits and time management skills. If you happen to do football and basketball well but not literature and math, you either fix the problem or forego a dream.

The end effect of forcing professional talent into the amateur ranks is what I mentioned before.  It is the Fab Five of Michigan who all got money from the neighborhood mentor and lover of kids that may have also been a bookie on the side. Ed Martin probably did exactly what he is accused of doing for Chris Webber and many other kids in Detroit, especially the professional basketball player kids that he helped nurture.  He gave them a hand up.  For the really good ones like Chris Webber, he might have given more.  I may have even told these pro's that he helped out "remember me when you make it".

In America, it is illegal to do this for a professional basketball player playing amateur college sports, but it is legal to force that professional to pass an ACT and pick a school for a year or two, just to be considered worthy to earn professionally.  If you are a doctor, this type of restriction (aka certification) is universally accepted. In professional sports, no other country in the world recognizes such a restriction, and even the NBA will draft and pay an underaged European player but places a ban on US high school players at the same time.

Let me say this once more.  US high school basketball and football players  are the only athletes in the world who suffer such a restriction.  Every other sport in every corner of the earth is free to earn income as soon as someone offers one.

While I certainly admire the efforts of the players from Northwestern, I have been critical of their class action law suit that would force colleges to pay the athletes. Title 9 has made this functionally impossible, because in order to pay any athlete, we have to pay every athlete the same. In the past, schools would balance their sports budget by eliminating sports that did not make much money.  Typically, women's sports experienced the ax first, however, eliminating male sports instead of adding female sports has been another route towards Title 9 compliance.

Whereas large schools could easily pay all of the kids, smaller schools have a few sports supporting all of the others (and sometimes parts of the academic budget as well). Across the land, there simply is no easy way to pay every athlete and comply with Title 9 as well.  As a result of this challenge, I believe this fight needs to leave the arena of profit sharing and enter the realm of corporate collusion .

Restricting only adolescent athletes in these two bigger, blacker sports is beyond the pale of understanding.  It allows the NCAA the NBA and the NFL to have their cake and eat it too.  Back when the Fab Five launched on the scene, they started wearing plain blue t-shirts in defiance of the system they recognized was raping them for every dime it could earn, and giving nothing back in return.

When the Fab Five decided to go baggy, Nike sold baggy shorts and put "Fab Five" on the marketing. Nobody did it before them, and nobody does it differently since.  When they wore black socks for the first time, sock sellers across the land grabbed a sharpie and wrote "Fab Five" on their black sock signs.

It would be easy to say that nothing has changed but the date on the story.  After all, the same ugly face of racial injustice that plagues America simply rears its ugly head in new ways from time to time.

The truth is that the NBA version of said injustice only began in 2005.  Instead of simply forcing a rookie pay scale, the league saw the NCAA as fertile (and free) ground for a de facto farm league.

I don't think it can be reiterated enough. The fact that this restriction is only placed upon US high school kids either makes a statement about our failure to groom our kids, or is just another shady example of business in America.