It's Time To Dance

Good morning everyone.  Since my Peyton Manning to the Arizona Cardinals prediction (which I think should be a mortal lock) is looking shaky, I better hustle and type in these NCAA Tourney predictions.  I hope that all of you had fun or are having fun filling out your brackets on the eve of the first big tournament day.  Let me pass along a great website to you if you want to do research.  I was looking for a site that listed all of the tournament field's records, and this was the best site that I found after checking out several websites earlier today:  www.insidebayarea.com/college-sports/ci_20154081/ncaa-tournament-capsules-all-68-teams
The page is really done well.  My accomplishment for last year's NCAA Tourney was predicting that none of the #1 seeds would reach the Final Four.  I was correct, and only had to sweat one of those teams reaching the Elite Eight.  Let me mention here once again that you can enter a free bracket challenge contest at ESPN (there are several being offered I'm sure).  ESPN's contest allows you to fill out up to 10 brackets.  I am going to give you my predictions based on the bracket that I have completed (which wasn't easy), and then I will go back to ESPN and fill out 9 more brackets to account for spots where I was really stuck.  Let me give you a little list highlighting my upsets...

1)  #12 Virginia Commonwealth upsets #5 Wichita State
2)  #12 Long Beach State upsets #5 New Mexico
3)  #11 North Carolina State upsets #6 San Diego State
4)  #10 Purdue upsets #7 St. Mary's
5)  #10 West Virginia upsets #7 Gonzaga
6)  #9 UConn upsets #8 Iowa State
7)  #9 Saint Louis upsets #8 Memphis

In the second round, I have the two #12 seeds pulling off upsets again, with VCU over Indiana, and Long Beach St. over Louisville.  I also have #5 Vanderbilt beating #4 Wisconsin in this round.  A game that I think will be very interesting is #1 Syracuse vs. #8 Kansas State, although I couldn't pull the trigger on it.  K-State has defeated Missouri twice this season, and they also split with Baylor and Texas.  After I stuck with Syracuse, I did pick them to fall in the next round to Vanderbilt (I am obviously counting on Vandy to continue their hot shooting...).  I also picked Florida State to upset Ohio State in that round.

My Final Four has three teams from the ACC (North Carolina, Duke, & Florida State) and Michigan State.

I have North Carolina beating Duke in the final.

In about 36 hours from now this bracket may be ripped to shreds, but I hope that you enjoy the tournament as much as I do...  :)  I will see you again on Friday - I hope that you enjoy this year's tournament as much I plan to.

Helloooooo, Nurse!

Awhile back I did a West Virginia Mountaineers commission for Matt, and he was happy enough with it to look into purchasing another. For the second, he mentioned off-hand that his lovely wife was a nurse, and I decided to go with it. I was trying to channel the spirit of such classic good-girl pin-up artists as Gil Elvgren and Fritz Willis, and while I'd never dream of comparing myself to those legendary fellows, I think it's a worthy attempt... more so for the delightfully cornball tagline!

Raising Arizona

Good evening everyone.  I am giving you my Monday blog post just a little early this week because I have to work tomorrow night - let me explain...  I usually wake up for my 8:00 p.m. shift at work at about 7:00 p.m.  True to form, I just woke up (it's 8:00 p.m. now, but last night it would have been 7:00 p.m. right now due to the time change).  Anyway, I am wide awake, and having just slept through the NCAA Tournament Selection Show, I want to get this blog entry out, and then I can take my first serious look at the bracket for this year's field of 68 so that I can start formulating my predictions for Wednesday's blog entry.  There is a free bracket contest that I participate in annually at http://espn.go.com/ if you are looking for a place to compete with your picks.  The contest is called 'Tournament Challenge' and they allow you to submit up to 10 different brackets for the Men's Tournament.  The deadline for submitting your entries is the tipoff time of the first game on Thursday, March 15th.  Speaking of basketball, I want to congratulate the UC Santa Barbara Lady Gauchos on earning a trip to the 'big dance' in the Women's Tournament this year.  During my high school coaching days, we had a player who went on to play at Rutgers and is now an assistant coach for UC Santa Barbara.  Congratulations to Coach Locke as she makes YET ANOTHER trip back to the NCAA Tournament...  :)  The title of today's blog refers to another prediction of mine that I first revealed on facebook earlier today.  I believe that Peyton Manning will play for the Arizona Cardinals next season.  Manning has made visits to the Broncos and the Cardinals so far, and I saw some film of him getting off of the plane for his meeting with Arizona earlier today.  Once I put some thought into it, I believe that the Cardinals will be the best choice he can make.  Arizona has an offensive-minded coach in Ken Whisenhunt who took the Cardinals to the Super Bowl a few years ago with Kurt Warner at the helm, Larry Fitzgerald is on the roster, and Arizona plays their games indoors.  So far the word on ESPN is that Seattle and Tennessee have shown interest in speaking to Manning but have been unable to set up a meeting with him.  Considering that the Broncos play in some nasty weather in Denver, and that Manning would have to face the Chargers, Raiders, and Chiefs twice each season in that division, I think the Manning will choose Arizona - we shall see...  For those of you who like to take vacations, and/or play poker in casinos, I have a resort review for you.  Very recently one of my friends and co-workers visited Lake Tahoe with his family.  They stayed at the Harrah's property in Lake Tahoe for five days.  Early in the trip they dined at an 'upscale' restaurant on the property ('upscale' for the purpose of this blog entry refers to the fact that my friends paid $ 300.00 for 3 meals - it does not mean that they had a positive dining experience).  Two members of the family ate a seafood salad that had shrimp on it, and both of them got food poisoning.  We're talking about food poisoning that put them out of commission for over 24 hours, but even after speaking with 3 different representatives of the Harrah's corporation, they received no compensation OF ANY KIND for their inconvenience.  Instead, they were met with an "oh well" attitude, and again, this was a party that stayed at the 'resort' for FIVE DAYS...  I hope that helps at least one of you to avoid a potential pitfall in your travels.  One last piece of advice before I go dive into the brackets at ESPN....  If you are asked to leave a bar or a nightclub by the staff, JUST... LEAVE...  In the HISTORY of bars and nightclubs, I would wager that there has NEVER been one instance where a patron has been asked to leave the establishment, and then was able to overpower the whole staff, the local law-enforcement, the state police, the National Guard, and then the rest of our nation's military to remain and enjoy the festivities.  IF this did happen, I bet that the other patrons probably weren't interested in hanging around.  PLEASE, just leave...  :)  We have now reached the end of this ramble and I am going to start studying this year's tourney bracket.  I hope that you have an outstanding week, and I will see you again on Wednesday with some predictions regarding this year's field of 68.

          

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY!!!

Good morning everyone!  I'm excited about this Friday just because it stands to be the last one for a while where I won't be making a sports prediction about something.  I'll give you another ramble on Monday, followed by a list of NCAA Men's Tourney predictions on Wednesday, and I'll have some more hoops predictions on Friday based on Thursday's games, etc...  At this time I have to give credit to my brother for his call yesterday.  The following was his facebook post before yesterday's Big East Tourney games began (he happens to cheer for the Orangemen, which prompted this post)...  "Big East Tourney Failure:  UCONN/SYRACUSE at Noon, USF/ND at 9PM.  You schedule the best game of the day with the number 2 team in the country and the team from New York in the Garden when everyone is at work and most likely won't see it!"  I read this post, then went back to sleep to prepare for my nightshift at work.  When I woke up and turned to ESPN, I learned that the Huskies had won a couple of games in a row since their coach returned to the bench.  Then they showed the highlights from the extremely close 58-55 Syracuse victory.  In all fairness, Notre Dame beat South Florida by 4 in overtime, but still, nice call brother...  ;)  I have a story from a former student of the local high school that was relayed to me through facebook, and I couldn't help laughing even though the story is pitiful (which is actually why I laughed).  The student relayed his involvement in a 'fender bender' earlier in the week, and said that when his mother showed up to the scene of the accident in a BMW, the female motorist, who to this point doesn't speak a word of English, starts clapping and stomping the ground chanting "MONEY, MONEY, MONEY!!!"  Yeah, never a dull moment, huh?...  For the moment winter has returned to San Marcos, America, as while I slept yesterday afternoon the temperature dropped from 77 degrees down to 49 degrees in an hour and a half.  I had already seen the 10-day forecast for the area earlier in the week, which made that Monday fantasy baseball studying trek to Bikini Hill imperative.  As far back as I can remember, I can only recall one spring break for the local university where the week off wasn't accompanied by rain at some point...  The break officially starts on Monday, but since most of the students here don't have class on Fridays, the festivities have already begun for all intents and purposes.  As far back as I can remember, the NCAA Tourney has also started during that week, which is why I am personally looking forward to next week.  It is one of the best sports weeks of the year with all of the games loaded up between Thursday and Sunday.  I am going to let you go now, but I hope that you have a great weekend and I will see you again on Monday.
    

Peyton Manning, Food Stamps, & Chicken McNuggets

Good afternoon everyone.  Today is surely a sad day for Indiana sports fans as the Colts have released their longtime starting quarterback, as rumored.  Peyton Manning served as yet another example of how important one player can be to a team, as the Colts went into a freefall without him at the helm this year, dropping so far that they received the top pick in the upcoming NFL Draft.  Manning is one of those athletes who has always made the players around him better, simply by his ability to get them the football.  He made his team much better by controlling the clock, opponents substitutions, and taking advantage of mismatches with audibles.  It will be very interesting to see how the Colts adjust without him and how he adjusts to whatever team he lands with.

Amanda Clayton... If you haven't heard this name before, you surely will be shortly.  According to Yahoo!, it seems that this 24 year-old lottery winner from Michigan, after electing to take a $ 1,000,000.00 lump-sum lottery payment, is STILL receiving food stamps from the state of Michigan...  The full article is at Yahoo! News, but I just wanted you to be aware of that story...  #brilliant

Have you ever stumbled across a piece of food that looked like something or somebody?  Well, in another Yahoo! News article, a Nebraska woman reportedly has sold a 3 year-old Chicken McNugget that bears a resemblance to George Washington for $ 8,100.00 on eBay.  You can't make this stuff up, nor the fact that 70 other people bid on the McNugget, nor the fact that the McNugget got over 40,000 page views on eBay...

I'm sitting here in limbo as I wait to find out whether I will be working tonight or watching college basketball.  I was able to watch some college hoops on Monday night, watching simultaneous games on ESPN and ESPN 2 as they BOTH headed to overtime - LOVE this time of year.  Earlier in the day, I did make that trip to Bikini Hill as planned, and enjoyed 75-degree weather as I spent about 3 more hours perusing through my fantasy baseball magazine.  I also saw a friend of mine show up with a guy and a small football.  Before she saw me, she was tossing the football around with him, and initially I wanted to get up from my studying to help her with her throwing.  They were only standing about twenty feet apart initially, but she was having trouble throwing a spiral, and was not following through on her throws.  However, that delivery served her well when they proceeded to stand about THIRTY YARDS from each other, and she was hitting him with her LAUNCHED spirals everytime...  Not only that, but she can catch the ball too...  :)  So Emily, if you happen to read this, good job!  ;)

I'm going to let you go for now, but I will see you again on Friday.  Have a great day!

  

It Looks Good On Paper

Good morning everyone.  Today, this week, actually this whole month looks good on paper - we shall see...  My day off is being forecast with a high of 72 degrees, which promises to be a perfect day to head over to Bikini Hill and do some more studying for my fantasy baseball draft, which is now just a mere three weeks away...  I mentioned in a recent blog that I was randomly selected to receive the 3rd draft pick in a 10-team league, so now I have to try to figure out which players will be available in which spots as the draft proceeds through 28 rounds.  I played in my first 10-team draft league for fantasy baseball last season and finished in 3rd place (with the top 2 teams getting paid).  If I wasn't so lazy, I would have left my apartment yesterday and headed over behind Bikini Hill to watch my alma mater complete a sweep of Notre Dame on the baseball diamond.  The Bobcats earned their fifth-straight shutout win in a row, their 3rd against the Irish.  That's the Texas State Bobcats, who will become a member of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in the fall - stay tuned...  ;)  My recent semi-obsession with moving back to Las Vegas (my friends, yourself included, might choose to remove the word 'semi' from that characterization) seems to leave everything else running in a distant second place on my list of interests.  Yesterday while reading stories from 1 of my 2 favorite Vegas reading sites, I was turned onto a 3rd.  I have now added the 'Las Vegas Cabbie Chronicles' to my reading list.  The website is http://lvcabbiechronicles.blogspot.com/ if you're interested in reading some true tales in the life of a Las Vegas cab driver.  Don't forget 'Life As A Las Vegas Poker Dealer' (written by a good friend of mine) at http://pkrdlr.blogspot.com/ or www.allvegaspoker.com/ if you're interested in reading some poker stories.  Back to the month that looks good on paper, this week will be FULL OF college conference basketball tournaments as we gear up for the NCAA tournament chaos that begins next week.  Remember that the brackets for the NCAA Tournament will be announced this coming Sunday (on the 11th), and I will hit you with some tournament predictions on the 14th.  Guess what I will be doing next Monday (study, study, study)...  Hopefully I get a lot accomplished at Bikini Hill today as I will be giving you my regular season MLB predictions on Friday the 23rd.  Warmer weather, the NCAA Tourney, the start of the baseball season - what more could you want?  My intention is to do some of my 'spring cleaning' today, sandwiching it somewhere in-between and around going to Bikini Hill and watching college basketball games on t.v. tonight.  As I sit here wondering what sage advice I can pass onto you on a Monday, trying to make sure that stopping by my little blog and reading this far was worthwhile to you....  ahhh, yes...  If you ever go out in public, say to a nightclub, to a live music venue for example..., I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND that you walk up to total strangers, and, I don't know.... proceed to stick your palm in their faces, before asking them if your hand smells like chloroform...  THAT was a new one on me...  Enjoy the rest of your evening, elsewhere...  Life is rarely boring in San Marcos, America...  My new most-annoying commercial on t.v. is the Totino's Pizza Rolls commercial where the kids are on the phone with their mother, unable to locate the pizza rolls which are sitting on the freezer shelf at EYE-LEVEL, right in front of them...  Now I'm not one to be cynical (okay, maybe I am). but maybe these children don't deserve to eat if they can't find these pizza rolls...  :)  HOW can you not see them?  WHO thinks that this is clever??  And they keep showing this commerical, OVER AND OVER...???  Well, I have a lot to do today, or that I SHOULD DO TODAY, so I am going to let you go now.  I hope that you have a great Monday, and I'll see you again on Wednesday.

        

Tim Tebow & Taylor Swift

Good afternoon and Happy Texas Independence Day everyone.  I've got another ramble for you today, but we're getting closer and closer to the point where we'll have predictions on Fridays once again, at least for a little while.  Sports will be mixed in with today's ramble as a consolation prize though, as I'm going to hit you with a few funny things from my fantasy baseball magazine.  I have been playing fantasy baseball for close to 15 years now (I'm not EXACTLY SURE which year was my first), and throughout my 'playing career' I have purchased the Athlon Sports baseball magazine.  I like the magazine because the layout isn't "busy" (their stats aren't arranged in some bizarre matrix that is intended to give their readers migrane headaches) and they include every team's schedule.  In this year's 2012 edition, the magazine did a 'Calendar of the Weird' from which I will share a few events which made me smile.  In April of last year, Ryan Braun attempted to contact a fan who had proposed marriage to him, but he wasn't able to get a hold of her because she included her phone number on the sign that she used at the ballpark and received a TON of phone calls...  :)  In a game last May, the Kansas City Royals used two pinch-runners in the ninth inning of a tie game who BOTH managed to get picked off of first base...  :)  In early October a 97 year-old man in Milwaukee called '911' because he wanted to watch the Brewers and Arizona Diamondbacks playoff game but he couldn't find his TV's remote control.  The BEST PART is that the police responded to the call and found the remote...  :)  Oh, and if you did join my fantasy baseball league, don't be drafting all of the Phillies just because I predicted that they will be in the World Series this year...  :)  So I was browsing through the Yahoo! headlines a little while ago, and happened upon one suggesting that Tim Tebow and Taylor Swift might be an item...  And you were wondering how Tebow was going to keep his name in the media during the offseason...  :)  In the little poker story blog that I found at AllVegasPoker, I read about something which I never really thought about doing in Vegas as a sports fan, but that it might be a fun idea for a football junkie.  This fan was mentioning how he went to one of the casinos to watch the NFL Draft.  It looks like they have a lot of fun doing that in New York City, and if you could get the casino packed with football fans, that definitely seems like it would be a good way to spend the day.  On the DYING TO MOVE BACK to Vegas front, I received some potential good news from a friend of mine.  It seems that he might be needing a house and dog-sitter and the end of August and start of September.  If you have been following my blog for any length of time, you know the thought that ran through my mind...  'Looking after the house, taking care of the dogs, and studying football FERVENTLY with the fast-approaching football season coming...'  Yep, I'm available...  :)  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE San Marcos, America, but the ability to play poker and/or make sports bets at the drop of hat (or a 'Benjamin')...  As I look through the poker stories as the AllVegas site, it seems that there a lot more 'Aces-Cracked', 'High-Hand' promotions, and 'Freeroll' tournaments for poker players in Vegas as the poker rooms compete for business.  Oh, and more tournaments with assorted buy-ins.  When I dealt poker in Vegas five years ago, brand new poker rooms were still being opened in the casinos as 'Texas Hold-Em' was exploding onto the scene.  The blog has now been viewed over 4,300 times for those of you tracking if I'll reach my predicted 20,000 views by the end of the year.  I'm so close now I can TASTE IT...  ;)  Okay, make sure that you start doing your scouting during the coming week for your NCAA Tourney Brackets if you haven't been doing so already - 'Selection Sunday' is now nine days away...  :)  Have a great weekend and we'll see you again on Monday!