You know what time it is.  No more NFL free-agency talk, congressional hearing discussions, or pictures of babies locked in cars.  It's time for The SportDork to turn my attention to the annual sporting event that the rest of the country is talking about.  It captivates the nation every March, sapping productivity and signaling that Spring has arrived.  It's the Six Nations Rugby Championship!!!  Congratulations to Wales for winning its second Grand Slam and Six Nations title in four seasons.  The French were a worthy opponent in the final, but Wales' stout defense and strong fundamentals were too much to overcome. 

I know what you're thinking.  How long can he keep up this charade?  Well, not much longer.  I did, in fact, watch the Six Nations final on Saturday, and it was good stuff.  I have now added rugby to my list of sports to follow, much to Mrs. SportDork's chagrin.  But I can't hold out any longer.  Not when March Madness is upon us!  To the delight of SportDork fans across the country, I have awoken from my basketball slumber that occurs every year during the college basketball regular season and am ready to dazzle you with my March Madness analysis.  If you followed my NFL Pick Of The Week last fall, you know that had you placed a hundred dollars on every game, by the end of the season you would have been giddy with joy over the staggering five to ten dollars of profit in your pocket.  I hope you enjoyed the burger and fries.  You're welcome.

What you may not have been aware of until now is that The SportDork's genius extends far beyond the world of college and pro football.  If you didn't take advantage of my NFL Pick Of The Week, this is your chance to make amends and come one step closer to achieving financial security.  That's because in today's entry, I'm going to give you something that people have been trying to get their hands on for years.  No, it's not my body - although that's a good guess.  Unfortunately for her, Mrs. SportDork gets all of that.  Right here, today, on SportDork.com, I'm going to let you see my bracket.  And because I'm a nice guy, I'm not even going to charge you for it.  It's yours for free.  (I really had an urge to add "when you buy this full set of amazing cutlery and the sharpener in the next twenty minutes" to that last sentence.)  But even better than the bracket itself, I'm going to give you the philosophy behind the bracket.  I know - you don't want to see how the sausage is made.  You just want to enjoy the sausage.  And while I would normally agree with that philosophy, I can't abide by it in this case.  If you have a gift, you have an obligation to share it with others. 

The truth is, I'm fairly confident that there's no one on the planet who has submitted more NCAA tournament brackets without ever winning than The SportDork.  I could have a nicely funded IRA by now on the bracket entry fees that I've squandered.  Therefore, much like my NFL selections, if you use my bracket as a guide for which teams not to select in this years' tourney, you are pretty much guaranteed to finish in the money in your pool.  Like I said, I have a gift, and today, I've decided to share it with you.

First, I feel the need to clear something up.  A few dedicated SportDork readers have pointed out that there has been a noticeable absence of college basketball coverage on these pages, and it has been suggested that the lack of coverage may have something to do with the fortunes of the Gator basketball team this year.  I am outraged by this allegation.  Don't get me wrong.  It's true, but I'm still outraged.  (Channeling Roger Clemens there.)  I could give some rambling explanation about how I don’t 'do' the college basketball regular season (because Mrs. SportDork doesn't do it) and how it's all meaningless until the tourney rolls around in March, but in reality, I have no defense for my actions.  Well I do have one, and it's this:  It's my blog, and I'll write about whatever the hell I want to.  Deal with it.  (I learned the overly authoritative, condescending tone from the best - Eliot Spitzer.  Or should I say, 'Client 9?')

Since I won't have a chance to talk Gator basketball for the next month by virtue of their failure to even make the NCAA tourney, I will now make my one and only comment regarding their season.  You may have noticed that a tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta the night after the Gators were eliminated from the SEC tournament, sending the rest of the tournament from the Georgia Dome to Georgia Tech, where only family members, media and tournament officials were allowed to attend the remaining games.  If you think that tornado was a coincidence, you're sorely mistaken.  If you haven't realized it by now, the Gator Nation is very powerful.  How powerful?  Well, if we aren't going to be able to win our third straight SEC Championship, we're going to make sure that we ruin it for everybody else.  Hey Georgia fans - that must have been great, watching your team win the SEC tourney in your own back yard!  The atmosphere in the stadium must have been electric!  Oh yeah.  That's right.  They wouldn't let you in the stadium.  You had to watch in on tv.  That's ok.  I'm sure it was just like being there. 

Sorry, but that's just how the Gators roll.  Remember - Hell hath no fury like a Gator scorned.

But enough about the Gators (I can't believe I just wrote that - next week's entry will probably be a six pager about their run in the NIT Tournament.  Did you see the extreme measures  Billy D has taken to motivate his squad?  http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/basketball/ncaa/specials/ncaa_tourney/2008/03/17/florida.ap/index.html). 

Anyway, I've made you wait long enough.  It's time for The SportDork's bracket!

Well, not quite yet.  First, let's talk strategy.  You have your bracket in front of you, and you don't know where to start.  Do I back-fill, starting with the four teams I think are going to be in the Final Four, working back to the first round?  Do I go with one underdog bracket and one favorites bracket?  Do I ride Mt. St. Mary's to the Sweet Sixteen?  So many questions.  So many options.  I'll admit, I don't have all (read: any of) the answers.  But I do have a few tried and true approaches to share with you today.

1)  ALWAYS pick all the twelve seeds over all the five seeds.  I will pick every twelve over every five until I die.  Why?  Because I vividly remember a bunch of twelves beating a bunch of fives like ten years ago, so now I always pick the twelves over the fives, even though the fives still win the majority of the time.  Let me tell you, one of these years all those twelves are gonna beat all those fives, and I'm gonna be smiling.  The amount I win in the pool with be approximately three percent of the total amount I've spent on NCAA tourney entry fees over the previous twenty years, but I'll still have a smile on my face, because I'll be a winner.  It's like your buddy who tells you about his great double down in Vegas on a pair of sixes that won him $500.  Never mind he was two grand in the hole when he hit that double down.  He's a winner.

In case you were wondering, I'm also the guy who stays in every hand of poker until the bitter end.  I refuse to be bluffed out.  I got bluffed out once holding good cards.  I'll never let that happen to me again.  I may lose a couple thousand dollars in the meantime, but one out of every ten hands I catch a guy trying to bluff me out, and I think you know who has the last laugh then. 

Picking twelves over fives is the rough equivalent to buying a security system for your home the day after it gets broken into, or buying a stock after you've watched it go from seven to forty.  You've watched it happen in the past, and now you're trying to get in on the action, but you're too late.  Well, at least I know it's stupid.  I think that means I'm past denial and have moved into acceptance.  Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, who I don't have to tell you was the woman behind the Kubler-Ross grief cycle, would be proud.  Kübler-Ross originally applied the stages of the cycle to any form of catastrophic personal loss, and I think we can all agree that watching your bracket get blown up because Notre Dame beat George Mason, who you had going to the Final Four, qualifies as catastrophic personal loss.

2)  ALWAYS pick Kansas to go to the Sweet Sixteen, but . . .

3)  NEVER pick Kansas to win the tournament.  I think this one is pretty solid.  They haven't won it all since 1988 - twenty years.  And yet they've been seeded between a one and a four almost every year since.  Not sure what happens to the Jayhawks come tourney time, but I got tired of watching them lose after the second round a few years ago.  They'll get there - they almost always do - but they're a pretty safe bet to lose somewhere between the Sweet Sixteen and the Final Four.  Apologies to my sister's husband, who will not be pleased to read number three.

4)  ALWAYS take nines over eights.  I have no idea whether this one actually works, but at least every time a nine beats an eight, which I have to believe is more often than a two beats a fifteen, you can proclaim, "I got another upset right in my bracket!", and isn't that the reason we fill these things out in the first place?

5)  ALWAYS submit one entry that has all the underdogs winning in the first two rounds.  This one ties in with number four, and is a "can't lose" strategy with two distinct benefits.  First, as I just discussed, when Austin Peay upsets Texas, it puts you in a position to let all your buddies know that you nailed that one.  And second, most pools have a provision where you get your money back if you come in last place.  By submitting this entry, you can claim you picked every upset of the first two rounds AND get your money back when you come in last.  Don't send me money.  A simple 'thank you' will suffice.

6)  ALWAYS pick a team to win the tourney that you are confident no one else is going to pick.  Why pick North Carolina or UCLA when you know fifty other people are going to pick them?  If they do end up winning, you know the pool winner is going to come down to something like whether you got the Butler-South Alabama game right, and you don't even know where Butler - or for that matter, South Alabama - is located.  And if it doesn't come down to that, you know it'll come down to the standard tiebreaker - whether you picked the total number of points correctly in the final.  Do you really want your future resting on a number that you probably forgot to even include on your entry when you turned it in?  A number that you probably shouted out to the pool manager as he was chasing you down on your way to the john an hour before the first game tipped off?  You hear what I'm saying.  Why mess with any of that?  By picking a team that no one else picks, you avoid all of that nonsense.  You can sit back and watch the games stress-free, knowing that if Oral Roberts brings home the title, so will you.

7)  While we're on the subject of the commonly used "total points in the final game" tiebreaker, allow me to make a suggestion.  When you submit your entry, ALWAYS add a half point to your guess on the tiebreaker.  Hopefully, the pool manager won't notice, and if you do end up in a race for the title, pandemonium will ensue when trying to figure out how to account for your guess of a hundred and thirty-seven and a half points.

8)  ALWAYS submit an entry that has all the same selections as the ESPN personality that you hate the most.  If you think Jay Bilas is a tool, go to espn.com, look up his selections, and submit an entry with all the same teams.  That way, every time you lose a game on that entry, you can bitch and moan about what an idiot Jay Bilas is.  It's very cathartic.  This one is also foolproof, since there's absolutely no chance of you winning the pool with picks from one of the geniuses at ESPN.   

9)  No matter how your entries are faring during the tournament, ALWAYS tell your wife that you are in the hunt to win it all, and that there are thousands of dollars at stake. Look - we both know you want to watch every televised game during the entire tournament, which, if my math is correct, will involve you sitting catatonic in front of the television for two Thursday nights, two Friday nights, three Saturday nights (and two full Saturdays), two Sundays, and one Monday night (the two full Thursdays and Fridays were omitted under the assumption that you will be 'at work' watching those games on your laptop or out enjoying a four hour 'business' lunch).  The only way that's going to happen is if the Missus thinks there are big dollars at stake, and they've got your - I mean, her - name on them.  So, when you're sitting in your La-z-boy watching Stanford, who you had in the Final Four, lose to Kentucky in the second round on Saturday afternoon, do yourself a favor and resist the urge to start screaming about what an idiot you were for picking Stanford to go that far.  Just sit quietly and lick your wounds.  Or, if you can muster up the fortitude, yell out something like "One step closer to the title!  Show me the money!" when your wife walks by.  You'll thank me later.  And don't worry, you can always explain your failure to bring home the jackpot on the fact that you were disqualified from the pool because you added a half point to your total points tiebreaker.

That's all I've got for today.  Nine tips.  Probably the number of games I'll get right in the first round.  Next week I will analyze the results from the first and second round games and break down the upcoming weekend's action.

Now - for the moment you have all been waiting for.  It's the SportDork's bracket!  Behold the tips in practice.

Go forth and prosper.

I couldn't get the whole bracket on the page, so below are my selections by region.


East (top left):



Midwest (bottom left):



South (top right):



West (bottom right):




Final Four and Championship Game (please don't tell me I need to write 'middle' here):




GO PANTHERS!!!!