March Madness As Told By A Mad Man
by Bill Delaune

A little madness in the spring is healthy even for a king Sir Robert Knight.

So you think the craziest case of spring fever this year struck the Catholic bishop in Savannah, Georgia, when he moved St. Patrick’s Day from its traditional date of March 17 to the 14th so it wouldn’t interfere with Holy Week?

I was born Irish-the Catholic part came later, protested one green-clad reveler who vowed to celebrate on the 17th as usual. And what would Tony Soprano do if the church tried to deny the traditional Italian St. Joseph’s altars on March 19? Doesn’t the bishop remember how many people got whacked in the famous Sopranos episode when some Native American sympathizers protested Columbus Day?
But rest easy, Father, because the real craziness won’t start until Thursday, March 20, when the NCAA Basketball Tournament gets underway causing an epidemic known as March Madness to sweep the country. If you think the economy is in the tank right now, wait until the first day of spring when workforce absenteeism hits an all-time high because of the 11 a.m. tip-off between Duke and Bethune-Cookman. And pity the poor employers who have to closely monitor those few souls who did come into work just so they could keep up with the early games on the company computer. So if you’re going to lose your religion or your job or both this March, you’re going to need some “walking-round money” to put the spring back in your step. The point being-you might as well hit the office pool for the NCAA Tournament before they run you off.

Now I know what you’re thinking. How can I possibly predict the behavior of 64 college teams in a season that began with Appalachian State’s football team upsetting Michigan and somebody called Gardner-Webb Wasn’t he Superintendent of Schools down here at one time?} killing Kentucky in basketball?
Well, I’m glad you asked. “Because as a service to you, my faithful readers, I present Basketball Bill’s Bountiful Bracket Busters. Remember, at this early press time, the field of 64 has not yet been determined. But these tried-and-true principles have been known to work-no matter who the teams are in one of the past five leap years. So without Freddie Adu, let’s get to our first tip.

1. A number 16 seeded team never beats a number one seeded team. But number 13’s beat 4’s and number 12’s beat 5’s. So make sure when you pick a Cinderella team that you can impress your cohorts at work with the correct pronunciation of your longshot.

For example, little-known Tennessee college Austin Peay’s last name is pronounced “Pee” and proudly proclaimed on their fans “Go Peay!” bumper stickers. Indiana giant-killer Valparaiso, who stunned Ole Miss a few years back on a buzzer-beater, prefers the third syllable to sound like “raise” instead of “rise”.

And everybody’s favorite Cinderella-Gonzaga- likes the second syllable pronounced “zag” like their unofficial nickname-the Zags. But if you have destroyed as many brain cells as I have over the years, you may have trouble remembering these little guides. Just use this helpful reminder- “When you” “Go Pee”, remember to “Raise” the seat and shoot straight-don’t “zig” or “Zag.” Call it “pronunciation by association” if you wish.

2. Anagrams-Warning: “Do not proceed if you don’t watch “Lost”, don’t believe in UFO’s or accidentally think that I have one shred of sanity remaining. However, if you do believe-like Mulder and Skully-that there’s something out there, and it’s trying to communicate with us by sending messages called anagrams-words that have to be rearranged before we poor creatures can conceive the hidden idea- then go forth.

For example, in the confusing world of politics, take the name GEORGE BUSH, rearrange the letters and you get “HE BUGS GORE”. Now take the phrase “ELECTION RESULTS,” rearrange and you get “LIES, LET’S RECOUNT”. Pretty scary, eh? Now for my friends in the entertainment industry, TOM CRUISE becomes “SO I’M CUTER”, JENNIFER ANISTON is undeniably “FINE IN TORN JEANS” and Mel Gibson’s strange behavior from time to time can be explained by his name’s anagram-

“BONG SMILE.”

So what does this have to do with basketball? �Well, I have some friends that wager on a variety of subjects {SLOT MACHINE by the way transforms into “CASH LOST IN ME.”} including the outcome of NCAA Tournament games. Always on the lookout for any edge, they asked me to see if I could use anagrams to help them win a few bucks.

But despite working all day with NCAA FINAL FOUR CHAMPION, the best I could come up with-give or take a consonant- was “A FAN IN A PINCH FOR �MOULA.” Sorry, guys. “But there’s always”

3. Mascots- Forget the Lions and Tigers and Bears, Dorothy. “There are some really great” mascots for teams in the tourney that aren’t nearly so clich. Take for starters, the Marist Red Foxes{which can be rearranged to “IF SMART SEX-REDO” by the bye}, the Kent State Golden Flashes {which replaced Silver Foxes in 1926} and the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks. Or if you’re playing the women’s bracket, “you can pick the SFA girls
team- the Lumberjills.

Another Lone Star favorite, Texas A&M-Kingsville, who made the tourney last year, is known as the Javelinas-a wild boar native to the Southwest , and Vermont’s nickname is the Catamounts which means “cat of the mountains”. But if California-Santa Cruz sneaks into the field of 64, at least give them a chance in the first round if only to say that you once picked a team called the Banana Slugs. You have to admit it’s a name with appeal.

4. Songs-  If Georgia Tech gets anywhere near the Final Four, “their fight song along should” get them through. Who else in the country sings, “I’m a Ramblin Wreck from Georgia Tech.” A close second is Oklahoma whose rousing fight song contains exactly two-count “em-two words Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner,” {Repeat seven or eight hundred times.} North Carolina’s unofficial pep song played at every time out gets the show money because their fans claim to be, Carolina, born and bred, and when I die Carolina dead Then there’s something chanted about hated rival Duke but this is a family magazine. Remember, these are the same fanatics who refuse to believe that one of their school colors is sky blue. They claim the sky is Carolina blue.

5. And the winners are Coming up with the Final Four survivors is even more difficult this year-especially since all the soothsayers have been run out of Livingston Parish. But by using the aforementioned signs- and enhancing them with some half-priced Margaritas from Las Palmas- one can confidently arrive at a Fab Four that will include some top seeds and lovable Cinderellas with the proper combinations of letters, music, and mascots to satisfy the cosmic forces and win you enough money to move to Tahiti. Since I don’t make any monumental decisions without music, I turned on my XM Satellite radio and got my first team without hearing a song. The “XM” practically jumped out at me like a monster in an old 3-D movie. Why, of course, Xavier’s Musketeers. The letters were right there, the nickname is classic and the golden slipper fits quite nicely for a longshot.

The second pick was a bit more complicated. When the Doors “L. A. Woman” first burst through my speakers, I felt certain it was a sign to include UCLA. But I waited for more clues-especially from the song’s bridge with the mysterious repetition of “Mr. Mojo risin.” After some intense letter juggling, I realized the phrase could be rearranged to spell out “JIM MORRISON”. So the UCLA Bruins are in- compliments of a message from the other side from the late lead singer of the Doors. The next song was by Axel Rose whose name can be rearranged to spell out oh never mind.I flipped over to the outlaw country channel and ran slap into Mel Tillis’s daughter Pam wailing Maybe It Was Memphis� so the Tigers get in-even with their clich mascot.

For the fourth team I needed a high seed with a catchy nickname and a decent song. The result- Nothing could be finer than “North Carolina and its unique”
Tar Heels nickname.

As far as the eventual champion, I took the first letters of the names of three of the schools and threw them in with UCLA. That gave me an X, an M and an N to go with the California quartet. The result was somewhat of a reach, but phonetically the information was there- CLU-X-MAN. So if the clue is the X-man, then Xavier is your longshot winner of the NCAA Tournament.