On Fathers, Sons, College Basketball and Baseball ...

*Note: If you are a NY Times columnist, you are no longer allowed to read this blog for free. If I have to pay to read YOU, then you have to pay to read ME. It's only fair. And I know that you probably agree. So, any NY Times columnist who happens upon this blog, please leave now and email me. I'll email back my address and you can send me a personal check or money order for $59.95 ($119.90 for David Brooks) and once the check clears, I'll email you again and give you the okay to come back and read my blog. Thanks.

–

As dawn broke on Sunday morning and the Supermoon faded away until I'm in my early 50's, I got online to view the devastation that had occurred over the previous three days.

The Japan earthquake and tsunami? No.

The coalition bombing of Libya? No.

My NCAA brackets have been annihilated! Two of my Final Four teams, Pittsburgh and Louisville, are already gone in less than dubious fashion. One of the things that makes the NCAA's so great, and frustrating, is that weird things happen and teams like Morehead St. beat teams like Louisville in strange ways and the people who had Morehead St. pretend that they really did know it all along and based their pick on their analysis of the match up and not on their giggling like a 12 year old boy saying “Morehead … heh heh heh .. MORE … HEAD. Get it? MORE HEAD? heheheh”

Whatever. I don't really watch college basketball, and much like baseball, since my dad died I haven't been nearly as much of a fan of it as I sued to be. And it has come to my attention that it's entirely possible that there is a connection between those two things.

Okay, so obviously this isn't a coincidence. What is weird though is how long it took me to realize what the deal is. I just figured my not watching or really following baseball and college basketball was my not being as big a sports fan as I used to be. I thought maybe I was becoming more sophisticated and my interests were changing to something more intelligent and crap like that. But, that wasn't really true. I was still watching and following college football, the NBA and the NFL (even though it secretly sucks) as much as always. It was just college basketball and baseball that I didn't seem to enjoy anymore.

When I was a kid, all the way through til I was an adult, the only things that my dad and I really had to talk about was sports. We played golf quite a bit when I was a kid and went fishing a few times a year, but we wspent most of the time acting like strangers to each other. Mostly because we were. He never seemed all that interested in me or my life or anything like that.

Of course, it's entirely possible that he sat around thinking “Well, he doesn't seem interested in telling me about his life or anything else” too. I don't know. I'm not laying all the blame on him. It very likely that we both simply took the easy way out and just left things at sports. Specifically college basketball and baseball. That's where I could connect with him so, maybe we both just left it at that.

Again, I don't know why it took me so long to recognize this. And of course, now that I've figured this all out, I have to decide if I want to actually explore this, or do as I've always done and basically just say “it is what it is” and leave it at that.

I don't know. I'll think about it some other time.

Stumble Upon the NCAA Tournament and Wear Daisy Dukes...

First, if you would like to participate in Doc and my (mostly Doc's) NCAA Tournament Pick 'Em Challenge then go RIGHT HERE to sign up. It's free and fun for all! But, if you wanna play, you gotta hurry. The brackets are set and the first game is Noon on Thursday.

Of course, I love March Madness and the NCAA Tournament. What I love most about it is the stories over-zealous cops in crime and drug-ridden towns launching raids of private business whose employees are playing in a tournament pool for like $10 a person. It happens every year and every year and every year the chief of police or sheriff defends the raids by saying that what those people are doing is GAMBLING! And gambling is against the law and, even worse, IT'S A SIN!!

And, we'll also get the BS story about how much American businesses lose because their employees are too busy watching tournament games and participating in those evil pools and pick 'em games. God forbid anyone EVER have any fun at all.

–

University of Arkansas fired their men's basketball coach John Pelphrey. I don't know if Pel deserved to be fired or not. Probably did. His teams seemingly got worse each year and even though he had the #5 recruiting class in the country coming in next year, Pel just never seemed to completely fit in here. His teams also seemed to always be full of turmoil and there were constant suspensions for unspecified reasons that, from the outside looking in, always appeared to cause MORE dissension on the team.

But I gotta tell ya, if Arkansas fired Pel just so they could hire Billy Gillispie fresh off his total and complete washout at Kentucky and his DUI's and rumors of spending as much time chasing co-eds as coaching, then I'm not gonna be particularly happy. Or worse, Tim Floyd! If you hire Floyd then you might as well reserve a whole floor of rooms at a local hotel for the NCAA posse that follows him around.

Plus, those two guys are pretty much hated by the national sports media. Sure, they all hated Bobby Petrino too, but we all knew that Pentrino would work out fine and it wouldn't matter. Not so with Floyd or Gillispie. The UofA really can't overcome that kind of beating again.

--

In happier news, I joined Stumble Upon. I don't really know why, but if you have a Stumble Upon acct, feel free to add me RIGHT HERE. I guess I was bored and just up and decided to do it. So, the first sites I “stumbled” were my own blog posts and a couple of episodes of “I'm With Stupid” of course. Anyway, I went back a little later and check out the pic that BTR put next to our show that started out to be about Charlie Sheen and turned into a surprise birthday party for me..

Oh yeah baby! Michelle Malkin. You can feel her hotness emanating from the computer screen.

–

And finally, now that my car has the correct time again because most of us have set our clocks ahead an hour (and many have whined non-stop about it for a full day which I totally don't understand), it is clear that it is now Spring. I don't care what the official first day is, it's Spring. No more cold weather allowed.

And, it's time for this to come back again...

Ah yeah. The ole “Bikini Tops with Daisy Dukes” was THE hot fashion trend around Redneckville last summer and I fully expect it to continue this year. And I can't wait.