NCAA Basketball Tournament Game on A2K! Win $1M!*

OK, I've got my picks in. Don't know if I will have any points after the first round, but, hey, it's just for fun. I have Kansas beating Duke for the championship.

The 1st games are just after noon ET on Thursday. So consider this to be your last invitation from me to join us on the NYTimes site.

Only one player had Old Dominion beating Notre Dame. (drumroll): Realjohnboy! Alas for Djjd and Ehbeth, that had the Irish winning the entire tourney. The rest of us figured they were over rated and would fall in the 2nd or 3rd round.
Djjd would have scored a remarkable coup had Robert Morris upset Villanova.

well i did my picks using only an alphabetical guessing game, and the winner was chosen by coin toss, win some, lose some

Yes, but did you pick UNI to beat UNLV? Love me some UNI.

I doubt that anyone but you picked Northern Iowa over the thugs of UNLV. Nice.

Wow, swimp.

who are the Irish?

Notre Dame is a Catholic university. Early on it had a student body which was quite comfortable with adopting the nickname "The Fighting Irish."
Then came the Italians (including the legendary football coach, Lombardi). Now ND is a total mix of cultures, religions etc. But they are still "The Fighting Irish."
Here is some history for you. When radio and then television developed the capability to broadcast football games live, but before they could do a lot of games, the execs settled on following ND. As a result, for many folks, ND was "their" team.
Even if they weren't Catholic or had been to college, Notre Dame was it.

That allure still exists today, a generation later.

How Much Gas Is Left In The Tank?
We all have made and will continue to make wrong picks. I wanted to try to quantify what our wrong decisions will cost each of us.
It turns out that Swimpy and Osso, who happen to be at the bottom of the rankings the last time I checked, are in the best shape. Why? Because they only had the teams they picked wrong not going much further anyway. Each of them is only losing 20 potential points because the teams bowed out earlier then expected.
Liontamerx is down 30 points while Johnboy, Tsarstapan and Tico are down 40. Ehbeth's pick of Notre Dame to win it all, combined with some other miscues by teams she thought would in contention, leaves her down 430. Djjd's strategy puts him down 440 .

okey doke - if I'd known allathatstuff, I wouldna picked that team

not that it matters much since my selection process was on the near side of entirely random

~~~

I was thinking along the lines of Dame Edna when I clicked on Notre Dame.

You didn't mean to say that Lombardi coached at ND, did you RJB? He was in the vicinity (Green Bay), but I don't think he ever coached the Irish.

You thinking of Knute Rockne, by chance?

Is that all?

True. Got my legendary coaches mixed up.

Well, I'm dead last in the group. I guess that's something

Arrrgh. Kansas loses.

I was trying to remember some five minutes when Lombardi might have applied to Notre Dame... (I used to keep the radio low in the minifilm xray room, back in the late fifties, when I was still in high school but worked on Saturdays and Sundays and two or three other days after school).

Wowza. I love an underdog, but wow.

Johnboy, Tico and Liontamerx had Kansas winning the tourney. So did President Obama.

Breaks my heart..........every man a Wildcat!