The madness continues ...
A number of folks have already gone into the whole BYU mess. As someone who runs an office bracket pool, I'd rather not get into the whole mess should the Cougars make the Sweet 16. But, geez, the NCAA handled that like so many quizbowl fiascos in the past. Hopefully, my job as bracketologist for TRASHionals doesn't turn out like that.

Speaking of the tournament, the play-in game turned out to be another close-fought, exciting game to watch. It's odd, though, that I'd watch this game because it was a tournament game, but this game barely registers anywhere if it's in the regular season, given it's a contest between two small-conference teams. It's almost like some of the low-end college football bowl games. To think, some of those televised NIT games have more drawing power but are sometimes boring contests.

Thankfully we'll have the tournament to create separate stress on top of a potential war. It will be interesting to see how CBS handles this should it go to war coverage. One of our writers is searching out hotels that may carry ESPN2 and/or TNN -- stations that may show the games if CBS dumps out of coverage -- while he's on the road. What we both discovered is that better hotels actually shaft you in terms of channels available on the TVs. I've been to my fair share of cheaper motels, and in most cases, they'll pipe in the local cable (40-50 channels at least). The better TVs go with the Spectravision or similar systems. Those limit the cable channels to the local networks, CNN, ESPN, The Weather Channel, HBO and maybe one or two "general interest" channels (USA, TNT, TBS). Or as we determined, you can either get more cable channels (E!, Game Show, Food Network, etc.) or you can get porn/PPV/video games.