Hoop dreams

I can't believe the suffering I have to endure today. I have a day off from work. My wife has to be in at her job early this morning. My in-laws are coming to pick up my daughter around lunch so she can spend a few days at their place.

All of that means I will have to stay at home all day with nothing to do except sit in my basement and watch the opening day of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Just me, 16 games and a high-definition television set. And beer.

I knew about the work schedules for my wife and me for a while, but couldn't believe my good fortune when my mother-in-law called the other day and offered to take the kid off our hands for a couple of days. I told my wife she should write the NCAA and thank them for having me occupied during our childless 48 hours. If it weren't for the games, I'd be bugging her about all sorts of things. Now, all she has to do is come down when she gets home from work to make sure I haven't fused to the recliner.

Before all this fell together, I had a decent amount of interest in the first two days of the tournament. I figured I would have to mix watching the games with watching my daughter. But knowing I had the first two days pretty much to myself stirred up some old memories.

I remember spending the entire first two days in our living room as a teenager with my brackets set up in front of me like an old lady arranges her Bingo cards. I had the remote in one had - this was way back in the olden days when more than one network showed games in the early rounds - and a pen in another, furiously marking off wins and losses and calculating my point totals.

My father's law firm gave me my first entry into basketball pools. They allowed you to enter as many sheets as you wanted, just like God intended. I made a killing in that pool in high school and college.

After that I always played in some pools here and there. I would do well some years and not so well others. None of that really mattered because the real fun for me comes from sitting with sheets around you trying to figure out if you have a chance to win the money. If the cash comes your way, that's just gravy.

None of this has changed even as I have lost interest in college basketball in recent years. Between having a kid, adding a hellacious commute to my day and just getting fed up with crappy fundamentals from the players, I just can't sit through games that much. The Division I school I most closely identify with - Penn State - has a horrid program so I don't even have that connection.

When I go to fill out my brackets each year, I pretty much operate from a pretty ignorant position (just like many other things in life). But I can pretend that I know what I am doing. I can wax poetically about the futility of a 1-16 matchup and the very rare 15 win over a 2. I can lament my stupidity when I pick a 5 to beat a 12 and end up looking stupid. I just have no idea about most of the teams I'm dealing with in those situations.

I kept that in mind as I picked my teams this week. I tried to play trends that I knew took place during most tournaments. I paid a little attention to what my favorite sports blogs had to say about the matchups. I made sure to put a little variety in each bracket I did to give myself a better chance at coming out near the top.

That's why the solitude over these first two days really helps me out. If I had to play Dad while the games went on, I would manage to catch up on scores and marking my brackets at the end of the day. But now I can spread them out wherever I want to obsess about whether George Mason will make another run or if the committee really knew what they were doing when they seeded Drake and Xavier that high.

For a couple of days, I will feel like I'm back in college, hanging on every shot and foul. I'll also probably drink too much beer which will remind me all too well that I'm no longer in college. March Madness is full of tradeoffs.

Brian Shea is probably enjoying a beer in his basement right now. You can contact him at columns@regularguycolumn.com.