A new kind of bracketology for 2011

I'm a huge fan of March Madness. It was always my family's favorite sports event of the year growing up. That first Thursday and Friday of the tournament were the only days of the year where we were parked ourselves in front of the television all day. Everyone filled out brackets, including my mom. I was usually the bracket master, keeping up-to-the-minute tabs on who was leading, who was losing and by how much. And every year, 90% of us picked the North Carolina Tar Heels to win it all. Anyone who picked Duke to even make the Final Four was scorned.

My wife has adopted this White tradition and has actually beaten my bracket 2 years in a row. In fact, 2 years ago she won her company-wide office pool with over 200 entries. She was decked out in Tar Heels apparel for that championship game and cheered every basket along the way as the Tar Heels gave her the victory..

This year I almost forgot about March Madness. We scheduled my daughter's memorial service for day 3 of the tourney and have been preparing for it ever since.

But ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, and CBS all have me on their radar. Their email reminders started coming in, telling me that duty called. 5 tourney invites later, I started to get the message.

So last night, after folding the laptop up and rolling over for some sleep sometime after 2:00, I decided I needed to get back out of bed and forge ahead with a bracket. I can't remember ever not filling one out.

So this year I tried a new strategy. It took more like 10 minutes than the usual 2 hours but involved no sweating out 8-9 match-ups, no Googling to see what the experts think. If my wife can beat me using common sense along with mascots and team colors, I clearly need to adopt a new, less basketball-oriented strategy.

As usual I'll try to check back here over the next few weeks with bracket updates. I have Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, and Florida in my Final Four. In reality I can't imagine a Big East team not making it there but hey, those are my picks and I'm not second-guessing them now!

Good luck to all of you filling out your own brackets! And to any of you basketball fans missing out on tourney action this Saturday to be at our service, thanks!