March Madness Triggers END of DAYS for Pools

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Day 1 of March Madness and already heart attacks have tripled, divorces are certain to skyrocket, liquor sales have doubled and David not only knocked the Hell out of Goliath but also out of about 99% of all the people expecting to win the Buffett Billion Dollar Pool and thousands of other pools requiring perfection.

Remember these names, Dayton, Harvard and North Dakota State, they are the villains who stopped you from landing on Easy Street for the rest of your lives.  In a matter of about two hours 99% of the millions in pools around the nation were stopped dead in terms of achieving the perfect bracket so you all can now sit back and enjoy some of the best, most unpredictable basketball in modern NCAA history.

Here is an AP story that says it all.

NCAA upsets crush bracket hopes

By JOHN MARSHALL (AP Basketball Writer) 12 hours ago AP - Sports

SAN DIEGO (AP) — So you were confident in your bracket, hoping to win the office pool, maybe get lucky and take down that $1 billion prize Warren Buffett is offering for a perfect run of picks.

One game in and ... done.

Way to go, Dayton.

Thanks for piling on, Harvard.

And North Dakota State — you've got to be kidding.

The first full day of the NCAA tournament got off to what has become its usual scream-at-the-TV start on Thursday, opening with three upsets that sent a wave of crumpled brackets — at least 95 percent missed at least one game before the tournament was 12 hours old — flying from Buffalo to San Diego. By the end of the night, fewer than 1 percent of brackets remained unblemished in contests by ESPN and CBSSports.com.

"Being bounced from the billion THAT early definitely made me feel some type of way," said Marcus Arman of Portland, Ore. "I can tell you this: I will not be supporting the city of Dayton in any shape, form or fashion so long as my foam finger still points upward."

Dayton, the No. 11 seed in the South Regional, got it started in the first game of the 64-team bracket, knocking off sixth-seeded Ohio State 60-59 in Buffalo, N.Y.

A few hours later, No. 12 East seed Harvard had its David-vs-Goliath thing working for the second straight year, taking down fifth-seeded Cincinnati 61-57 in Spokane, Wash.

Two upsets, and almost everyone shooting for perfection was eliminated before they got home from work.

North Dakota State, No. 12 in the West, finished off the day of dead pools by outlasting fifth-seeded Oklahoma 80-75 in Spokane's second upset of the day.

Thanks for playing everyone.

With Dayton's win, about 83 percent of the brackets in Yahoo's Tourney Pick 'Em game were one and done, perfection flushed in 40 minutes. Wins by Harvard and North Dakota State only figured to add to the number of disappointed would-be billionaires once the official numbers were released.

It was a 9.2 quintillion-to-1 pipe dream to begin with, and Buffett has to like his chances even more now.
"Yesssssssssss HARVARD!!!!!!! Messing up a lot of peoples chances at $1 billion lol," former Harvard and current Houston Rockets guard Jeremy Lin said on Twitter.

At CBSSports.com, Dayton took out 81 percent of the poolers in the bracket challenge. By the time the Bison roamed over the Sooners in the evening, 0.4 percent of the brackets were still perfect.

Of the 11 million brackets in ESPN's Tournament Challenge, over 80 percent had Ohio State advancing to the next round. That's about 8.8 million brackets with a blemish after one game.

And to the 2.2 percent that had the Buckeyes going all the way to the Final Four: Oops!

Through 12 games, there were 41,315 perfect brackets out of the original 11 million — or about 0.3 percent.

This, of course, is nothing new.

We are in the era of upsets, where seedings and status have little bearing on the bracket.

A year ago, not a single person of the 11 million who entered on ESPN's website was perfect after a first day filled with upsets. Just four got 15 out of 16 right.

By now, we've learned that Cinderella's carriage doesn't turn into a pumpkin once the NCAA tournament starts. It becomes a Formula One car racing through the bracket — and it may be moving at an even faster pace this year.
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AP Sports Writer Jon Krawczynski in Minneapolis contributed to this story. 
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The Scoopala on the Hoopala - March Madness is Here!!!

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At long last the college basketball season is over and the conference tournaments have left more questions than answers so it must be time for March Madness when men become boys watching the boys become men playing.

Thank God for sports in America and the Super Bowl, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, March Madness, World Series and every other athletic showcase that separates the best from the rest.

If we had to live only with the news, politics and current events the suicide rate would be ten times higher in America, the gambling industry would be dead, and guys would have so much more time to spend with their girls the divorce rate would probably double.

Think of the economic impact from sports.  Billions spent in pools, billions more spent on booze, and for the first time we will know the economic impact when potheads try to keep up with the high speed boys in shorts.  We can actually measure the economic impact in Colorado (where it is legal) and also poll the fans to see how many even realize the University of Colorado is in the tournament.

"Hey man, what the hell is a Buffalo doing running up and down the court?  I thought we were watching B-ball not National Geographic."

This will also be the first time in history we have a billion dollar pool thanks to The Sage of Omaha Warren Buffett and speaking of Omaha the Creighton Blue Jays are also in the tourney along with player of the year candidate Doug McDermott.

The last two national champions, Kentucky intra-state rivals the Louisville Cardinals and the University of Kentucky Wildcats are in the same bracket and will have to play in the third round, long before the championship game.

One of the #1 seeds, the University of Arizona, is my alma mater where I played on the Wildcats team long ago and should have a good shot at winning it all but the field is well balanced and any number of teams could win.

From now until April 7 we can forget about the world and join our families and friends in one of the greatest reality shows in the world, the NCAA Basketball championships.  These kids have spent their entire lives working for this moment.

Most world and national championships like the Super Bowl, World Series, World Cup and even the Olympics give the players multiple chances to win since they can always qualify the next year but once your college career is over there will never be another chance to win in your lifetime.

Of course the cheerleaders add glamour and energy to the proceedings and it is their only moment in the national spotlight as well.  Come to think of it there should be a contest for the best cheerleading squad as well.

So here is some of the scoopala...

Watch Doug McDermott of Creighton, the smoothest shooter in the nation, continue to set records.

Will the only unbeaten team in America, Wichita State, survive?  They have to get past Kentucky, St. Louis and Louisville in the first three rounds.

Can #1 Florida keep it up after escaping a loss to Kentucky in the last second of their last game?

What conference will win the most games?  What conferences may not exist next year?

Will there be a Cinderella team this year (San Diego State?)?

Which teams will self-destruct in the closing minutes when a player forgets the team and seeks individual glory?

What better way to end the Winter of our discontent than letting your globes get glued to the radiation generator screen and cheering for the underdogs.  Move over Putin, we got better things to worry about.

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Obamaville March 18, 2014 - Obama who? What foreign policy?

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There are times when it seems the entire liberal social establishment in America has obliterated the memory of our sitting president from their minds, and thus from the news as well.

You see, when you control the media YOU decide what fodder to feed the foolish public and mums the word when it comes to the former darling of the liberal left.

 

 

One must admit that they have had quite a run of back luck or silly policy which ever you care to believe.

 

 

There is the case of promising to end the wars his first two years as president, made nearly six years ago by my math.  More people are being killed since we left Iraq than when we were there.  So much for bringing peace to the birthplace of civilization.

 

 

The only reason we will be out of Afghanistan by the end of this, his 6th year, is because President Hamid Karzai GCMG is throwing us out.  With the Taliban radicals patiently waiting across the border in Pakistan for us to leave, don't count on much peace there.

 

 

Then there was Libya, Egypt, Iran and Syria where revolts were won and lost and each time the people moved farther and farther away from good relations with America.  Did I mention Benghazi and the murder of our ambassador and other Americans?

 

 

Now, with the fracturing of the Ukraine and separation of Crimea American foreign policy is more fitted to cartoons, Saturday Night Live skits and MAD magazine than any serious strategic consideration.

 

Add to that the NSA scandals.  It's bad enough spying on your own people let alone spying on the leaders of your closest allies so no wonder the administration has a propensity to shoot itself in the foot.

 

 

Don't you find it rather ironic that our spy agencies can look down from satellites and read what kind of cigarette pack you have in your hand but they can't find an airplane, Flight 777, bigger than three football fields?

 

Now all those foreign failures alone are more than enough pain and consternation for most politicians but foreign policy failures are just the tip of the iceberg and Obama's Titanic billion dollar political machine long ago slammed into the iceberg.

 

 

When the truth of the past four years slaps the liberals across the side of the head they will also realize their last great hope, Hillary Clinton, is also on that same Titanic sinking swiftly to the ocean's floor because her fingerprints are right there along with the president in planning and carrying out the toxic foreign policy disasters.

 

 

It will take a lot more than an ex-president from Hope, Arkansas to salvage the colossal failures the Obama Dream brought us.  Speaking of ex-presidents, the public is yet to be told the truth about how the Clinton administration was responsible for gutting energy and financial regulations that enabled the greatest Wall Street scandals in our nation's history, scandals in which the perpetrators have yet to see a day behind bars at the expense of the government.

 

 

The biggest danger to the Democratic party in losing control of the Senate this year and the White House in two years is not that they will lose their liberal stronghold in Obama and Harry Reid, because most of the Obama agenda has not been enacted, even during the two years the Democrats controlled everything.

 

 

No, I suspect their biggest fear is the danger that could result in vigorous and long over due prosecution of those people and institutions who plotted with the Clinton administration to bend the rules and make a huge windfall profit while gutting the federal treasury and leaving the people on the brink of personal bankruptcy.

 

 

A Republican president and congress just might decide it is time the people know the truth about the energy price spikes, the home mortgage collapse, the Wall Street shenanigans, bailouts, payoffs and 401k retirement disasters brought about since the Clinton presidency.

 

 

The next Obamaville article will focus on more of the Obama legacy in terms of his domestic affairs record from the endless stream of broken promises to the few successes that mutated into disasters.

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The saddest words - It might have been

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“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,

the saddest are these, It might have been.”

 

 

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote these powerful words in his poem,  "Maud Mueller," published in Pamphlet in 1856.  An American poet and Quaker who fiercely opposed slavery, he was strongly influenced by my favorite Scottish poet Robert Burns.

It was 158 years ago when Whittier wrote those immortal words.  Just seven years later the Emancipation Proclamation, a presidential proclamation, was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863 freeing all slaves in America.

On April 9, 1865 General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant formally ending the Civil War and abolishing slavery forever, and just six years later the greatest president in our history was assassinated after leading our nation through it's darkest hours.

 

Destiny?  Certainly Lincoln had premonitions of his upcoming death.  If George Washington was the Father of America then Abraham Lincoln was most certainly the Soul of America sent to the promised land in our hour of most need.  In the end he gave everything including his life to save a struggling nation and make it a beacon to the rest of the world with a Constitution guaranteeing individual freedom and equal opportunity.

 

Robert Burns inspired other people besides Whittier.  Burns lived during the American (1776) and French (1789) revolutions and greatly admired those people who would challenge the powerful monarchies that controlled them.  A prolific poet and lyricist,  his poem and song "Auld Lang Syne" is sung throughout the world as New Year dawns.  Born January 25, 1759 he died July 21, 1796 when he was just 37 years old.

 

American novelist John Steinbeck used Burn's works for the title of his 1937 novel "Of Mice and Men."  When asked for the source of his greatest creative inspiration, singer and songwriter Bob Dylan selected Burn's 1794 song "A Red, Red Rose" as the lyric that had the biggest effect on his life.  Author J. D. Salinger borrowed from Burn's poem "Comin' Through the Rye" for his 1951 novel "The Catcher in the Rye."

 

Even I was drawn to Burns and his wonderful talent when I discovered that a distant Scottish relative,  Mary Campbell, was one of his first loves and the subject of several early poems.  Their relationship was the subject of much conjecture and it has been suggested that on May 14, 1786 they exchanged Bibles and "plighted their troth over the Water of Fail" in a traditional Scottish wedding.

 

In August of the same year she was caring for her brother who had typhus and caught the disease herself eventually dying at the age of 23 in Campbeltown, Scotland, an ancient town founded by my ancestors of the Campbell clan.

 

At any rate, while the historical perspective is interesting it is the poignant, melancholy and sentimental words of Whittier one should ponder.  What do they mean in your life?  Are they your final testament because you did not have the courage to follow your heart instead of your mind?  Or can you still escape from the sadness of knowing something might have been?

 

Perhaps you never had a choice in the matter.  Over and over in my life things happened, not of my making or doing, that radically altered my life, shattered my dreams or broke my heart.  Some were my fault or choice, others were when I was a victim of the cruel hand of fate.

 

Some were big and others were small yet they all were definitive lessons that I really wished I didn't have to learn.  Don't get me wrong or feel sorry for me, they were my path, not yours, and I am certain there was some kind of mystical or spiritual reason for the experience.

 

I remember once I spent years with a childhood friend and classmate before I realized  his older sister was my soul mate.  It was something I never expected.  She was the most beautiful girl I ever knew and I was always amazed at how the older boys were lined up to take her out.  She was also very smart, talented and worked hard to hide her many attributes.

 

For some reason, perhaps my lack of discretion or desire to talk to everyone, or the fact I never beat around the bush but always was frank, honest and kept conversations in total confidence, she always treated me like a confidant in spite of a couple of year's age difference.  It seemed I was always far more comfortable with older and more mature people.

 

 

Over the years I became her sounding board about boys, life, the world and whatever else she wanted to discuss.  When her family moved to the next state I would visit her brother several times a year and spend time talking to her when I was in town.

 

After about 12 years of knowing her, when I was a junior in high school, things suddenly changed when I drove to her home.  Bear in mind that in spite of my maturity I was always in awe of her and being her friend was about the best thing I ever did.  But I was also no fool so I was aware my chances of ever being intimate with her, or her wanting to go out with me, were about the same as dating Audrey Hepburn or Natalie Wood.

 

On this particular visit I noticed she seemed really sad and when she went out for a walk behind her house I followed to find out the problem.  By the time I caught up with her she was sitting on a fallen tree trunk and I sat down beside her.  No person that nice and beautiful deserved to be sad so I started singing the Elvis song "Are you lonesome tonight" and to my absolute surprise she started laughing.

 

I asked her if I was that bad and she said I wasn't, but it was just what she needed to stop feeling sorry for herself.  So we talked.  For hours it seemed.  She told me about all the creeps who wanted to date her for a trophy, how insincere they were and how she wished people could just be honest and respectful, like me.

 

Finally she asked what I thought of her, really thought of her.  I admitted it would be impossible to give her any objective assessment because I had been madly in love with her since I was in 1st grade.  After she stopped laughing it took me about 20 minutes to convince her I really was hopelessly in love with her.

 

As she pondered on my dilemma she acknowledged I was the only person she could discuss anything with and never worry about being judged, she trusted me to keep her secrets, and that I always had something intelligent or funny to make her feel better.  Why was it so easy to talk to me she wondered?  And why did I care enough about her to try and help her if she was feeling bad or make her laugh when she was sad?

 

Eventually she concluded I really did care for her.  What she wanted most was to find someone who treated her like I did.  By this point I was praying to God to let her kiss me on the cheek or something in appreciation.  Then she said why do I need to find someone like you when I already know you?

 

That dangling modifier left me dangling and speechless.

 

Over the next year I made several trips to see her brother and her and we spent more and more serious time together.  Hugs grew into kisses and neither of us had any interest in any other person being part of our lives.  Of course we still had college to get through but we agreed to let our parents know how we felt about each other before I went away to college.

 

One day that summer before I left for the University of Arizona she called and said she was going to fly down where I lived in a corporate plane from her father's company so we could tell my parents about us.  Then I would drive her back home so we could tell her parents.  By now we felt so strongly and comfortable about each other that being engaged seemed insignificant.  This was the person I would share my life with.

 

No more would we have to sneak around hiding our relationship.  As I waited at home for her to call and say she landed I was listening to the music of the British invasion on the radio when a news bulletin came on that a corporate plane had crashed a few miles from the airport and there were no survivors.

 

As the weight of the world crashed down on my shoulders I just knew it was her and my heart sank.  She was gone forever.  Our secret would never be revealed.  Our life would never be shared with each other.

 

I was engulfed in a darkness that seemed to suck the life out of me.  I did not know what I did to deserve such a fate and I did not understand why such a beautiful soul had to be taken from this world when she had so much to offer.

 

In the end  I was very angry with God for a long time to come.

 

It was not the first time the line "the saddest words of tongue or pen are these four words it might have been" haunted me and conjured up all kinds of shattered dreams, but this time the line was empowered like never before, and it pierced my heart like no other event in my life.

 

Though I had no choice nor fault nor blame in the tragic event I took it personal and wondered if she was gone because of me.  If I had never pursued our long distance relationship wouldn't she still be alive?  I lost my Earth Angel but in the end I guess I got my Angel in Heaven to help watch over me and I could only hope that the Kingdom she was now in was a far better cry than what we have here.

 

Many years later the passage of time seemed to lessen the anger and allow me to realize that we are all on our own separate paths and though our paths may cross and even run parallel for a time it does not diminish the fact we each have our own Sacred Covenant with Divine Providence and we will depart when our time has come.

 

Rather than harbor bitterness or anger over the loss of a loved one, an act which I came to recognize as somewhat selfish, I became aware of how blessed I was to have spent any time on this Earth in the company of an Angel.

 

As my memory of her shifted from the tragic conclusion of our relationship in the ashes of a plane crash to the wonderful time we did have when we were together, and to the beautiful hopes and dreams we shared of a life together, I think I began to understand the real meaning of love and life.

 

Love is the spiritual bond between two souls allowing them to share both creating and creation in life and of life and it transcends the physical world and human definitions as we discover perfect love together.

 

Whether you call it the Christ consciousness or the conquering of human ego and spiritual dualism, perfect love is accepting co-creator responsibility for all that is, recognizing the life force in all of creation, and giving all of your existence to caring for the gifts of creation we experience in this life and any future existence.

 

Life is the record of our progress in this journey of our soul during this existence, a stepping stone in our Sacred Covenant leading toward our path home.
 

Do not waste your opportunities in life.  Do not embrace "it might have been."

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