It's that wonderful time of year

When I was at the peak of my sports-crazed youth, in junior high, I once declared that March Madness was the second best time of the year only to Christmas. While I no longer devote quite as much attention to college basketball as I once did when I was playing the sport, I'm still a fan and the upcoming start of the greatest tournament-style playoff in sports still gets my blood rushing. I can hardly wait for that first day of simultaneous and back-to-back-to-back hoops contests. I even heard something on the radio the other day that with all of the people watching the games or checking for score updates online during the first two days of the tournament, U.S. employers lose something like $3 billion in productivity. Bummer.

Although the NCAA tournament is still a couple weeks away, March Madness officially started with a BANG yesterday with Florida State upsetting #1 ranked Duke at home, after arguably getting a Duke upset stolen from them earlier in the season with a lack of an apparent foul call. As any jacked-up fans would, members of FSU's student section rushed the court. The one tiny detail they overlooked was that there were still seconds on the clock. I could really care less about this. It happens all the time and the game was realistically out of Duke's hands. But the downside of this is, Coach K got the opportunity to take attention away from FSU's performance by acting all miffed about the whole thing. Sorry Coach K, but there are bigger fish to fry, such as is your team even going to beat North Carolina and when is J.J. Redick going to get his stroke back?

Unfortunately I will have no home team to root for in this year's tourney. While my Minnesota Golden Gophers have been playing their best ball of the season in the last month and beat several ranked opponents, they also started the season 0-6 due to injuries and an overall lack of identity. Thus, my loyalty will probably be turned to my home-state Wisconsin Badgers (and of course whoever I pick to go far in my bracket).

Anyway, it's been a while but I gotta get back on track with the Top 5. Here goes for March:

1. March Madness
2. St. Patty's Day - to steal from a sports blog I read I'll be "0% Irish, 100% drunk"
3. A big tax return
4. My new Panasonic digital camera (in the mail!)
5. Dave Chappelle's Block Party

Be cool.