the tindog coffeehouse

How many teams does the Big 12 Conference have to lose before it stops being the Big “12″? And when exactly is it no longer considered “Big”? We may find out pretty soon now that Texas A&M has officially declared they’re packing up their marbles and leaving the Big 12 for a shot at the bottom of the SEC.

The Aggies apparently weren’t too keen on their intrastate rival Longhorns getting their own television network, despite the fact that the Longhorn Network will be available to exactly seven households in America, none of which are in Austin. But logic has never been A&M’s strong suit, so they’ve chosen to abandon 100+ years of tradition and possibly as much as $30 million in exit fees in hopes that the SEC will let them in to their exclusive club. Yeah, good luck with that. Let’s see, how many Big 12 football titles has A&M won? How many BCS games have they gone to? How many National Championships have they won since the rise of the BCS? Zero. And yet they really expect to do better against the likes of Auburn, Florida, Alabama, and LSU?

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Alright, boys and girls. It’s time once again to dust off your NCAA Tournament brackets and pretend to know who will win every single one of the next 67 college basketball games. Odds that you’ll get them all right? About 1 in, well, a lot.

But here’s what I came up with. As always, I highly recommend not taking any of my advice, as I’m almost certainly wrong about 90% of these games. Consider yourself warned.

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I’ve largely stayed away from all the various NCAA conference expansion and/or realignment rumors floating around the interwebs the last few months because, well, they’re just rumors. One day you hear the Big Ten is going to steal the University of Texas away from the Big 12, the next you hear Texas is going to the SEC. One day the Big 12 is imploding, the next it’s expanding. Publicly, athletic directors declare their undying love for their conferences, but then they’re supposedly working vigorously in the shadows to broker a million other deals. And all the while, state legislators are trying to influence the process for their own particular benefit.

Is this college sports or As The World Turns?

The latest rumors have the Pac-10 asking Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, OU, Oklahoma State, and Colorado to be their new BFFs, thus elevating the Pac-10 to a 16-team superconference and completely decimating the Big 12. That would leave Baylor out in the cold, a result that doesn’t sit well with Waco’s state senator, David Sibley, who is apparently now fighting to have the Bears superglued to the other Texas teams. Meanwhile, the Big Ten, which has been rumored to be courting everyone from Texas to Nebraska to the North Dakota School for the Deaf, is supposedly focusing its efforts on Notre Dame. And Boise State, which was a lock for the Mountain West, is putting its plans on hold to see how everything else shakes out.

And of course, everything in the previous paragraph will be null and void by the time you finish reading this post.

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Kansas, you’re dead to me.

After picking you to win the National Championship, what did you do? You went out and lost to Northern Iowa, a school that I’m pretty sure is fictional since no one has ever heard of it.

Also gone is No. 2 Villanova, who lost to tenth-seeded St. Mary’s. That’s also pretty embarrassing, but at least no one expected Nova to win the South region. Besides, with two small Catholic schools playing each other, it’s just clear that God liked St. Mary’s better. (Although the word on the street is that the Pope had Nova by 10.)

I’m still sticking with K-State to make it to the Final Four, and my other 2 picks, Kentucky and Duke, are still safe. As for the Midwest, it’s definitely living up to its nickname, “The Group of Death”. I would say at this point that Ohio State looks like it has the best shot at winning the region, but you never know. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Issaquah School of Interior Design won the whole thing!

Previously:
March Madness: First-round results
March Madness 2010: My picks

It’s only the end of first round of the NCAA tournament, and my bracket is already pretty bruised. Out of the 32 first-round games, I missed 9, giving me a percentage of 72%. Ouch.

Biggest upset: Murray State’s win over Vanderbilt, who I’d picked to make it to the Final Four. Seriously, did anyone in America pick No. 13 Murray State to pick off No. 4 Vandy? No, of course not! Not even the mother of the Murray State coach. Other big upsets: No. 14 Ohio over No. 3 Georgetown, No. 12 Cornell over No. 5 Temple, and No. 11 Old Dominion over No. 6 Notre Dame.

Upsets I actually got right: No. 11 Washington beating No. 6 Marquette and No. 9 Northern Iowa beating No. 8 UNLV.

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