Now that the results of round one have been officially logged, I, like most people across this fine country, find myself sifting through the carnage of my brackets and thinking to myself, “Next year I’m paying more attention during the regular season”! 

(Of course I won’t, since football runs all the way to early February, but right now, I’m going with this thought anyway!!) 

I finally broke down and took a look at the brackets of my lone submitted entry.  (Call me old fashioned, but I’m not big on submitting 63 different entries, just to make sure one works out.  NFL playoffs…yes, but college basketball…no!)  It was disheartening to see what lay before my eyes. 

The first thing that jumped out at me was the sweet sixteen round.  I’ve already lost four of my teams, as Wichita State, Michigan, Duke and Missouri all were upset in the first round.  This a glaring example of why I never, ever bet on college games.  All you need is one star player to have a fight with his girlfriend before the big game to have him go down in flames.  You don’t see that happen much at all at the Pro level. 

Looking farther along, the round of eight and the final four are all missing one of my picks, since I mistakenly had Missouri storming out of the West regional!  

One bit of good news.  After watching Syracuse back into a first round win (NO, I’M NOT GOING TO DISCUSS THE END OF THAT GAME RIGHT NOW), I was not feeling comfortable that they would get past Kansas State.  However, at the time of this posting, the Orangemen have won that game 75-59.  I guess they got a wakeup call on Thursday! 

Looking ahead, my first though is that I’m done.  However, looking at the teams that were upset, I can’t help but think that most people have lost at least one or two of their top teams, too.  Okay, I knew like most people that Duke was a paper lion and was ranked way too high at #2 in the South, but they should have at least beaten the #15 Lehigh. 

But Missouri?  I had them reaching the final four and figured that their semifinal matchup with Kentucky would be the real championship game.  For them to lose to #15 Norfolk State is simply incomprehensible! 

Well, I’ve got to go now.  It’s going to take some time to put together a strategy for who to root for and who to root against.  If I don’t get to it now, I may get distracted by the latest team to jump into or out of the Peyton Manning sweepstakes!!