Hoops or war? An easy decision
Yup, it was a stressful day in the office. But it would've been that way war or not. The only difference is that the war cut into some television issues. However, ESPN did a good job in picking up the CBS games in the afternoon. Plus, the fact that ESPN had some schedule conflicts later in the day almost seemingly forced CBS to pick up the games in the evening. And, if you want to believe in the fact that money and entertainment prevails over news, think about the money CBS is losing with war coverage compared with the ad revenue it picks up by showing games. CBS even showed The Late Show (with guest host Bonnie Hunt) hours after war started.

On a side note, it was a bit strange seeing ESPN telling viewers to watch CBS News for the latest on the war during the afternoon games (done by the CBS crews) and then watching Sportscenter minutes later and having the crawl asking people to watch ABC News for the latest on the war.

As for the games themselves, I did pretty well for myself in the first day of tournament action, just missing on the Marquette-Holy Cross game and the Wisconsin-Milwaukee-Notre Dame game, plus whiffing on Arizona State-Memphis. Of course, that means that Marquette and Notre Dame could go far (oh well, go Catholics!).

(I'm sure I missed a few picks in other pools, but I've got to base my picks on the office pool I run. I'm still trying to figure out how I've got a couple of executive-types in the pool.)

It was fun seeing the first three games of the day all coming down to the final seconds. Then came the parade of usual tournament games: the "sexy" upset picks almost, but don't, happen (see Holy Cross, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, San Diego, Weber State); blowouts by the top seeds (poor snowbound Vermont, couldn't they have skiied to Salt Lake City?); major scares for top teams like Kansas and Duke; a high-ranked but low-seeded mid-major team getting upset by a fellow mid-major in the first round (doesn't the Central Michigan upset of Creighton seem a lot like Wyoming's upset of Gonzaga last year?); and Tulsa pulling off another wild but not unexpected upset. You really could script some of this stuff, although the excitement is always fun.
However, I'm sure many bracket folks are happy that BYU went away quietly.