Just like the other 300 million people in our country who participated in an NCAA pool, I'm assuming that every person who lives in this country fills out a bracket.
I filled out 3 different brackets. In one, I took all the favorites. In the second one, I took the underdogs. It's the 3rd one that I really got excited about. This was the one that I spent hours watching game films of all 65 teams. I broke down each team's wins/losses, and I took into account the quality of their opponent and how they did outside their region. I also took into account what the weather would be like on the dates they played, and what they might eat on the road. I even consulted "Carnac the Magnificent" (see Johnny Carson).
I was ready! As I started to fill out the brackets I felt a rush like something I never felt before, and I took teams like Northern Iowa, Cornell and St. Mary's to the Sweet 16; teams like Michigan State and Butler going to the Final Four with Duke and West Virginia. I won't tell you how the rest played out in my bracket, because it would not be fair to those who are going to watch the games and want to be surprised by the outcome. The casinos would lose lots and lots of cash.
I will tell you that I discovered a problem with my computer last night when I checked my bracket. It must have been a bracket virus, because it changed my bracket. Yes, it did! For some godawful reason it changed all my picks and I ended up with a Final Four of Kansas, Cuse, Baylor and Kentucky. It made me feel sick. Really sick! I thought, "Why in the world would I pick those four teams and Kentucky over Kansas in the Championship?" There are things that happen that can't be explained ... NC State over Houston, Villanova over Georgetown, and the reason that this virus picked me to change my brackets. We may never know these answers, but the saving grace is that all of my family and friends know that I am still perfect with my "bracket" and that is all I care about.
Wise Guy
Monday, March 29, 2010
I want to be like Mike!
I want to be like Mike. No, not that one (Jordan)! I'm sure most of you heard last week that Mike Bellotti stepped down as the Athletic Director of the University of Nike ... oops, I mean Oregon! The reason he gave at the press conference was that he was afforded his dream job as an analyst with ESPN, and couldn't pass it up.
It made perfect sense after I rammed my head in the wall 5 or 6 times. Mike was a California Kid who grew up in the Bay. He played football at UC Davis before coaching at Cal State Hayward, Chico State, and as an assistant coach at Davis. These were steps he took to become an assistant coach at Oregon. He was the offensive coordinator for 5 years under Rich Brooks before being named the Oregon head coach in 1994. He held that position for over 14 years before stepping down to become the Athletic Directer at Oregon. Mike won 2/3 of his games as the head coach. These were steps that he took to become an ESPN college football analyst. This makes about as much sense as Wolfgang Puck working as a fry cook at McDonald's.
It doesn't make much sense to give up a $2.5 million dollar contract to work a job for about $150,000. Living your whole life on the West Coach and have the desire to move back where the mother ship is in Bristle, Conn.? Having spent my fair share in the great northeast (sarcasm), I can honestly tell you that late fall and winter sucks! But, once again, it is his "Dream Job." Good luck, Mike, and see you at San Jose State in a couple of years ... your next "Dream Job"!
"Wise Guy"
It made perfect sense after I rammed my head in the wall 5 or 6 times. Mike was a California Kid who grew up in the Bay. He played football at UC Davis before coaching at Cal State Hayward, Chico State, and as an assistant coach at Davis. These were steps he took to become an assistant coach at Oregon. He was the offensive coordinator for 5 years under Rich Brooks before being named the Oregon head coach in 1994. He held that position for over 14 years before stepping down to become the Athletic Directer at Oregon. Mike won 2/3 of his games as the head coach. These were steps that he took to become an ESPN college football analyst. This makes about as much sense as Wolfgang Puck working as a fry cook at McDonald's.
It doesn't make much sense to give up a $2.5 million dollar contract to work a job for about $150,000. Living your whole life on the West Coach and have the desire to move back where the mother ship is in Bristle, Conn.? Having spent my fair share in the great northeast (sarcasm), I can honestly tell you that late fall and winter sucks! But, once again, it is his "Dream Job." Good luck, Mike, and see you at San Jose State in a couple of years ... your next "Dream Job"!
"Wise Guy"
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The Day the Music Died... (NCAA Tournament)
I originally wrote this post the day before the Tourney started. We are now at the Sweet 16. This is shaping up to be something special...Go St. Marys (Catholic Team)!
Maybe this is what Don McLean had in mind. With the Big Dance just hours away, I was left wondering what happened to college basketball. I may be alone on this island, but again, what happened?
As a young boy growing up in the 70's I remember when the NCAA Tournament came on after the 11 pm news. Yes! The 11 o'clock news. My dad was a "sports dad" so we were allowed to stay up and watch the Tournament. I don't remember any of the UCLA Dynasty ... maybe it never happened. The first one I remember was the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers. That team was led by Quin Buckner & Kent Benson. I was 12. We are a Catholic family so naturally we grew up rooting for Catholic teams, and, yes, we were USF Dons fans. The Dons were a West Coast power during that era. During that same time we also rooted for a Notre Dame team with Tripucka, Woolridge and Jackson. As I entered the 80's, I began to follow a De Paul team that was coming off a final four appearance with a freshman led team in 1979. The next four years they entered the Tournament as a #1 seed only to get knocked off in their first game. I was rooting for some of the greatest under achievers of all time. Keeping up with that Catholic theme, I was in college basketball purgatory.
Little did I know that during the 1977 season, a seed was planted deep within me and I was moving toward the Dark Side. There was this shark (Tark) that bit me. His UNLV Running Rebels played a wide open run and gun style game, and with Reggie Theus went to the Final Four. In 1987, UNLV once again made the Final Four led by Armon Gilliam and Freddie Banks. That seed continued to grow and started to blossom. By the time the 1989-1990 regular season started, I was breathing heavy and wore a black mask. I was "UNLV Vador." This was a magical time for college basketball, not just because we had the most exciting college basketball team of all time. Yes! UNLV was! They had a cast of characters named Johnson, Augmon, Butler, Hunt and Anthony. Once again, that "Catholic thing" kept coming up. After the passing of Hank Gathers, I began to pull for a Cinderella team that every expert and my paper boy predicted was going to be bounced in the 1st round. That team was the Loyola Marymount Lions (LMU).
Bo Kimbo & Co. won their first 3 games to make it to the Regional Final. The Regional Final pitted Good against Evil, Catholics against Sinners, Road Runner against Wiley Coyote. Yes, it was UNLV vs. LMU. There now seemed to be a struggle for my college basketball soul. What was I going to do? I pulled the "Hank 44" tape off the back of my 1-yr-old daughter's sneakers and I went with UNLV. Yes! Vegas baby! Sin City! I never looked back! UNLV beat Duke by 30 in the championship game. I finally reached the mountain top as a fan. I finally had a team that won it all. Yes, you can say that I danced with the college basketball devil. That is when it started to change for the worse. By the end of the 90's it seemed like everyone in high school declared for the NBA ... including my 30-yr-old paper boy.
You see, between 1976 and 1997 college basketball went from obscurity to one of the greatest sporting events of all time. We had teams like the "Basketeers" (Arkansas), Phi Slama Jama (Houston), Lethal Weapon Three (Georgia Tech), and even the Fab Five (Michigan).
There were characters that seemed to come from Marvel comics. Magic (Ervin), the Muffin Man (Mark Aguire), Sky Walker (Kenny), The Dream (Hakeem), The Glide (Drexler), The Rocket (Foster), Dr. Dunkenstein (Griffith), and we even had a Kid (Jason) and this Bird (Larry), to name a few.
We had the greatest coaches of all time: Knight, Brown, Tarkanian, Olson, Carnaseca, Thompson, Heathcote, Crum, Valvano, Richardson, McGuire, Boeheim, Miller, Lewis and those other two guys from Carolina and Duke that I will not mention.
This was a game that you could root for a team and your favorite players for 3 to 4 years. Jordan, Worthy and Perkins at UNC; Aguirre & Terry Cummings at De Paul; Hakeem & Drexler at Houston; Ewing, Morning, Mutombo and Iverson at Georgetown; Johnson & Augmon at Unlv. You also had players named Moncrief, Thomas, Sampson, Payton, Alford, Smart, Price, Malone, Stockton, Pippin; Elliot, Shaw, Bird, McHale, Parrish, Mullin, Richmond, T Hardaway, Robinson, and Duncan.
I lived through the greatest time for college basketball and young people will never know what March Madness was really about. For all the old guys, as you watch this watered down beer of an event, take time out to raise your glass to toast what once was the NCAA Tournament.
The "Wise Guy"
Maybe this is what Don McLean had in mind. With the Big Dance just hours away, I was left wondering what happened to college basketball. I may be alone on this island, but again, what happened?
As a young boy growing up in the 70's I remember when the NCAA Tournament came on after the 11 pm news. Yes! The 11 o'clock news. My dad was a "sports dad" so we were allowed to stay up and watch the Tournament. I don't remember any of the UCLA Dynasty ... maybe it never happened. The first one I remember was the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers. That team was led by Quin Buckner & Kent Benson. I was 12. We are a Catholic family so naturally we grew up rooting for Catholic teams, and, yes, we were USF Dons fans. The Dons were a West Coast power during that era. During that same time we also rooted for a Notre Dame team with Tripucka, Woolridge and Jackson. As I entered the 80's, I began to follow a De Paul team that was coming off a final four appearance with a freshman led team in 1979. The next four years they entered the Tournament as a #1 seed only to get knocked off in their first game. I was rooting for some of the greatest under achievers of all time. Keeping up with that Catholic theme, I was in college basketball purgatory.
Little did I know that during the 1977 season, a seed was planted deep within me and I was moving toward the Dark Side. There was this shark (Tark) that bit me. His UNLV Running Rebels played a wide open run and gun style game, and with Reggie Theus went to the Final Four. In 1987, UNLV once again made the Final Four led by Armon Gilliam and Freddie Banks. That seed continued to grow and started to blossom. By the time the 1989-1990 regular season started, I was breathing heavy and wore a black mask. I was "UNLV Vador." This was a magical time for college basketball, not just because we had the most exciting college basketball team of all time. Yes! UNLV was! They had a cast of characters named Johnson, Augmon, Butler, Hunt and Anthony. Once again, that "Catholic thing" kept coming up. After the passing of Hank Gathers, I began to pull for a Cinderella team that every expert and my paper boy predicted was going to be bounced in the 1st round. That team was the Loyola Marymount Lions (LMU).
Bo Kimbo & Co. won their first 3 games to make it to the Regional Final. The Regional Final pitted Good against Evil, Catholics against Sinners, Road Runner against Wiley Coyote. Yes, it was UNLV vs. LMU. There now seemed to be a struggle for my college basketball soul. What was I going to do? I pulled the "Hank 44" tape off the back of my 1-yr-old daughter's sneakers and I went with UNLV. Yes! Vegas baby! Sin City! I never looked back! UNLV beat Duke by 30 in the championship game. I finally reached the mountain top as a fan. I finally had a team that won it all. Yes, you can say that I danced with the college basketball devil. That is when it started to change for the worse. By the end of the 90's it seemed like everyone in high school declared for the NBA ... including my 30-yr-old paper boy.
You see, between 1976 and 1997 college basketball went from obscurity to one of the greatest sporting events of all time. We had teams like the "Basketeers" (Arkansas), Phi Slama Jama (Houston), Lethal Weapon Three (Georgia Tech), and even the Fab Five (Michigan).
There were characters that seemed to come from Marvel comics. Magic (Ervin), the Muffin Man (Mark Aguire), Sky Walker (Kenny), The Dream (Hakeem), The Glide (Drexler), The Rocket (Foster), Dr. Dunkenstein (Griffith), and we even had a Kid (Jason) and this Bird (Larry), to name a few.
We had the greatest coaches of all time: Knight, Brown, Tarkanian, Olson, Carnaseca, Thompson, Heathcote, Crum, Valvano, Richardson, McGuire, Boeheim, Miller, Lewis and those other two guys from Carolina and Duke that I will not mention.
This was a game that you could root for a team and your favorite players for 3 to 4 years. Jordan, Worthy and Perkins at UNC; Aguirre & Terry Cummings at De Paul; Hakeem & Drexler at Houston; Ewing, Morning, Mutombo and Iverson at Georgetown; Johnson & Augmon at Unlv. You also had players named Moncrief, Thomas, Sampson, Payton, Alford, Smart, Price, Malone, Stockton, Pippin; Elliot, Shaw, Bird, McHale, Parrish, Mullin, Richmond, T Hardaway, Robinson, and Duncan.
I lived through the greatest time for college basketball and young people will never know what March Madness was really about. For all the old guys, as you watch this watered down beer of an event, take time out to raise your glass to toast what once was the NCAA Tournament.
The "Wise Guy"
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Who Says You Can't Go Home? Welcome Back, "NOMA"
Who's says you can't go home? My wife is getting excited because it's a Bon Jovi song. It might be a Bon Jovi song, but this is a Nomar post! Yesterday, one of Boston's favorite sons returned home, and this morning he retired as a Red Sox. From an all-state soccer player from Whittier, CA, who just happened to be a little better baseball player; to a two-time All American baseball player at Georgia Tech; to the 1st round draft pick of the Sox back in 1994. He made it to the "Show" in August, 1996, and got his first hit (HR) off the A's, and in 2009, his last hit as an Athletic. In between, he won the Rookie of the Year award, two batting titles, the Silver Slugger Award, 6-time All-Star, and Comeback Player of the Year Award as a Dodger. He, most importantly, became a husband and a father to twin girls. A man who will live his retirement life as the second most famous person in his household. The first happens to be his wife, the "Michael Jordan" of Women's World Cup soccer, Mia Hamm.
Nomar, as a Red Sox hater, people often thought my 1st son would be named Bucky (F@#kin) Dent (middle name came from Sox fans, see 1978). I went from that to one of the many in "Red Sox Nation" thanks to you. As a Giant hater, it felt good rooting for you with the Dodgers. Finally, as a big-time A's fan, it was great seeing you in Green & Gold (yellow).
But most of all, thank you! Not just for all the memories we as fans have of watching you play, but for me it was that special bond that you helped build between a father, a son, and the love of baseball. One that some day will be passed down to his son(s).
Let's say it one last time...Nomaaaaa!
See you on Baseball Tonight.
"Wise Guy"
P.S. My wife loves Nomar almost as much as Bon Jovi!!!
Nomar, as a Red Sox hater, people often thought my 1st son would be named Bucky (F@#kin) Dent (middle name came from Sox fans, see 1978). I went from that to one of the many in "Red Sox Nation" thanks to you. As a Giant hater, it felt good rooting for you with the Dodgers. Finally, as a big-time A's fan, it was great seeing you in Green & Gold (yellow).
But most of all, thank you! Not just for all the memories we as fans have of watching you play, but for me it was that special bond that you helped build between a father, a son, and the love of baseball. One that some day will be passed down to his son(s).
Let's say it one last time...Nomaaaaa!
See you on Baseball Tonight.
"Wise Guy"
P.S. My wife loves Nomar almost as much as Bon Jovi!!!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
I Feel Like a Prize Fighter today...
Today has Finally arrived and I feel like I'm in great shape. Just like any prize fighter before me, I laid awake the night before wondering if I did everything I could physically and mentally for such a big event.
Like Ali, Frazier, Holmes and many more who thought they had 1 more fight in them, I have my doubts, too. You see, it has been 2 years since I've been in this type of atmosphere and part of me hopes that I can just go the distance. With my game face on, I am going over my fight plan in mind. I am going to come out dancing at the sound of the bell. A little bobbing & weaving through the first few rounds as I try to establish my jab. In the middle rounds I will try to wear down my opponent using some "rope-a-dope" and some body clenching when I'm in trouble. With Matt as my cut man and Brenda & Mo in my corner, I feel I will win those late rounds, finishing strong! If it goes to the score cards I feel comfortable that I will finish the night on top.
You see for most of you today is Tuesday, March 2nd. In the Beltran home it is Jon Bon Jovi's Birthday. March 2nd, 2010, is the date of his concert at Arco Arena in Sacramento. As I look out my upstairs family room window at the arena less than a mile away, I think maybe this will be my last hurrah or I can be like foreman and back at the arena in 2 years!
Like Ali, Frazier, Holmes and many more who thought they had 1 more fight in them, I have my doubts, too. You see, it has been 2 years since I've been in this type of atmosphere and part of me hopes that I can just go the distance. With my game face on, I am going over my fight plan in mind. I am going to come out dancing at the sound of the bell. A little bobbing & weaving through the first few rounds as I try to establish my jab. In the middle rounds I will try to wear down my opponent using some "rope-a-dope" and some body clenching when I'm in trouble. With Matt as my cut man and Brenda & Mo in my corner, I feel I will win those late rounds, finishing strong! If it goes to the score cards I feel comfortable that I will finish the night on top.
You see for most of you today is Tuesday, March 2nd. In the Beltran home it is Jon Bon Jovi's Birthday. March 2nd, 2010, is the date of his concert at Arco Arena in Sacramento. As I look out my upstairs family room window at the arena less than a mile away, I think maybe this will be my last hurrah or I can be like foreman and back at the arena in 2 years!
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