Karen Yelito is Awesome! (For Now)

You remember last year when I spoke of the glory of Lacey Smith concerning her exemplary prognosticating in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament? No? Fine, here’s a hyperlink. After 500 words of explaining her excellence, she went on to…well…NOT WIN You’re a Bracket II. That honor was bestowed upon Mike Nordberg, who managed to get the LEAST amount of games correct, and then hit the overall winner, Florida in the final. His pick of the Gators gave him 32 points, which he miraculously used to overcome the 31-point deficit he faced. Amazing.

(Apparently, this was Mike’s One Shining Moment, as he chose to “ride on a fancy submarine” over “defend his title.” He is noticeably absent from this year’s festivities.)

So all I'm saying, is that just because you're in the lead for the time being, it doesn't automatically confirm that you will be crowned the You're a Bracket III champion. And of course, we would like to feature the excellence of those in the driver's seat, so we'll do it. Just keep in mind that this is far from a coronation.

I give you Karen "The Coffee Machine" Yelito!!!

With only the Final Four standing in her way, Karen has amassed an impressive 101 points to date. If she goes perfect in the last three games, she could end up with 165 out of 193, easily a record for the YAB tourneys of the last three years. Her secret? It's all in the method.

1. Sit down with an empty bracket.
2. Crank some Journey.
3. Let the music be your guide.

I have no doubt that the silky voice of one Steve Perry is what has propelled Yelito into our top spot. She never Stopped Believin' in Xavier. She welcomed Louisville into the Elite 8 with Open Arms. She rooted for Davidson Faithfully (at least for a round). Any Way You Want It, Karen Yelito had it this year. And with 3 of the 4 Final Four teams (sorry, Texas), she's got the right to brag.

Or does she?

With four teams, three games, and one championship left, there are 8 different scenarios that can play out next weekend. And while she may feel invincible, (what with her picks she made like 3 minutes before leaving for work that day), it's worth mention that Karen will be crowned thy champion in only ONE SCENARIO. For those of you scoring at home, here's how next week may unfurl.

If the final game is:

• North Carolina over UCLA: The Coffee Machine is your winner
• North Carolina over Memphis: David 'I Don't Want Your' Reif is your winner
• Kansas over UCLA: Kelly "The Darkhorse" Liggett is your winner
• Kansas over Memphis: Liggett's got the Jayhawk lockdown again
• UCLA over North Carolina: Why, that would be CHRIS CONDON!!!
• UCLA over Kansas: Tim "From 15th to 1st" Fischer comes out of nowhere.
• Memphis over North Carolina: Greg "Just Winsky, Baby" is your man
• Memphis over Kansas: Winsky gets the square.

It's far from over, kids.

September Madness!

Welcome to YAB. Don't mind the date - we've misplaced our calendar.

Regardless of the month it says it is, you are obligated as an American to reduce your productivity this upcoming Thursday and Friday and pay attention to likely meaningless games between colleges you never considered attending. And sure, it's one thing to root for the sake of rooting, but wouldn't it be a little more fun if you had some skin in the game?

Who the hell came up with that phrase, anyway?

(Ok, apparently it was Warren Buffet. That man is everywhere!)

Actually, I'll tell you what. At YAB, we ask not for your own skin, but offer the promise of a wicked sweet prize. (And just because Mike Nordberg has yet to receive last year's T-shirt doesn't mean that said promise will be unfulfilled.) Welcome to You're a Bracket III.

All you have to do is go to the following (outdated) url:

http://yab07.mayhem.sportsline.com/e

The password? Why that would be "condon."

In the coming 24 hours, expect some bracket capsules to help with your selections, although I should warn you.

I intend to make everything up.

Let's start with the East, shall we?

• North Carolina comes in as the top seed. I recently watched them fight off Duke in Durham at a sports bar, accompanied by Nordberg. Unfortunately, my last shirt was a Tar Heel blue polo. How can you wear a UNC-colored shirt to a bar and claim you aren't supporting the team? Answer: by buying Nordberg enough beer to keep him quiet.
• Mount St.Mary's, the 16 seed, had to defeat Coppin State for the right to be slaughtered by the Heels. On top of that, they made them go to OHIO to play said game. What prayer didn't St. Mary answer from the NCAA committee to warrant such abuse?
• Indiana's season has gone to hell ever since former Head Coach Kelvin Sampson was fired for texting his BFF, Jill.
• Arkansas has a senior guard named Sonny Weems. I did not make this up.
• Notre Dame promises, at no point in this tournament, that they won't even mention college football. That includes references to Rudy.
• George Mason beat William and Mary to win the Colonial. Their mascot, the Dreamcrusher, will be making the trip to the Big Dance.
• Washington State has had it with the Pearl Jam and coffee references, thankyouverymuch.
• Winthrop cried at the end of Atonement.
• Oklahoma can't get over the face that all of the hybrid vehicles are so damn ugly. What do you mean the Honda Element is not a hybrid?
• St. Joe's has a mascot who refuses to stop flapping his wings. Ever. That'll come in helpful should the gym bleachers catch on fire.
• Louisville is in Kentucky. Better luck next university founding.
• Boise State has developed a space age wood that shall be installed on their home court for next season. It's Smurf blue.
• Butler has banned the game Clue from all road trip activities.
• South Alabama has been granted a home game of sorts, getting to player Butler in Birmingham. It's near Greenbow.
• Tennessee's head coach Bruce Pearl has appeared at women's games shirtless and painted orange.
• American has seen the tape and should be in therapy shortly.
  

Dethrone the King!

I’m not a big fan of people who have the surname “King.” It’s like some shot of nomenclature self-entitlement has fused with their general personality, because some time long ago one of their relatives fell into a fortunate position of royalty. They’re aren’t many monarchies these days; people continuing to exist with the “King” name are hard-pressed to find a throne and scepter to call their occupation. So instead, they are forced to take non-ruling positions in our global work force. Talk about a shot to the ego.

After all, your last name probably is based upon either 1) the place in which your ancestors hailed from or 2) the job your ancestors held. Most of these words have dulled over time, and have become non-offensive to those who use them today. Rob Harford, for example, probably can attribute his family handle to some tiny hamlet back in England. Chris Smith, no doubt, comes from a long line of smiths, those who worked with metal for a living. Karen Yelito – erm, well, uh, no doubt got her name when a great-great grandfather cried whilst falling off a cliff. Everyone’s got a story.

But those who choose to continue using “King?” I have no patience for these people. Larry King is perpetuating idiocy in the media by lobbing softball questions at repentant Paris Hilton and putting his support behind crappy movies like Rush Hour 3. Stephen King, though a great writer, prides himself on not owning a cellular phone. One of these days he’s going to be alone in a spooky house and something from the undead will be closing in, tracking his every move. And since the undead know to kill the phone lines, Stephen King will one day regret his anti-technological stance. James King – he, wait no, SHE is that pretty blonde nurse who bites it in the bombing scene from Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor. Her androgynous moniker confuses me to this day. (And judging from Josh Hartnett’s perpetual confused face, he doesn’t know what to make of it, either.) And that Martin Luther King – my GOD – no, wait –

We’re cool with Martin Luther King. Junior.

But Peter King? No freakin’ way.

Peter King is the football journalist Emeritus over at Sports Illustrated. He’s well-respected for his weekly Monday Morning Quarter Back (MMQB) column, where he covers the week in the NFL, among other things. He’s parlayed his surging readership to an occasional desk appearance on NBC’s Sunday night football coverage. And he prides himself on having a cell phone with every possible football contact in its address book. And yet,

I CAN’T STAND HIM.

You want reasons, in a blinding, over-crowded paragraph form? Sure! He name drops so much, it’s like he dropped a phone book on his foot. He showed repeated bias towards the New England Patriots, his hometown team. He constantly mentioned his daughter’s collegiate sports prowess, and then gets mad when other websites poke fun at it. He thinks that his views on coffee are shaping the entire industry. He invokes a “Quote of the Week” feature, and then proceeds to list 9 Quotes of the Week. He takes moral stances on things that have nothing to do with his expertise – like the amount of violence in The Departed. He makes list of the 500 Best Players in the NFL, and insists that Packers CB Al “I Am Served Often with Jam” Harris is better than 1,554 other guys. He reviews movies that came out 9 years ago because he just got around to seeing them. (Saving Private Ryan was recently featured.) He makes obvious statements like “This LaDanian Tomlinson kid may turn out to be a decent back in this league.” Oh, and he sucks at fantasy.

WHAT WILL WE DO TO COMBAT THIS?

YAB will be holding a weekly “Pick the Winners” known as Dethrone the King, a way to prove that you, the average person, know more than a guy who follows football for a living. Each week, I will e-mail you my patented DtK form, and all you have to do is e-mail it back to me before the games start that week. The standings will be maintained in the sidebar here at YAB, and anyone who ends up with a better record than Peter King at year’s end will receive a YAB bumper sticker that proclaims your scrumtrilescense.

If you are interested, let me know in the comments.

YAB = You're a Bracket II.

When I was younger, the NCAA’s Selection Sunday was right up there in the Top Ten Days of the Year. (Ok, that may seem a little high – let’s back that up a bit. You’ve got Christmas and your birthday, the last day of school, Easter, Halloween, first day of soccer season, probably two of the days I spent in Ocean City in August, Flag Day (what? I was a patriotic kid that enjoyed a good Sousa march), and that’s about it. See, I told you there was room for Selection Sunday. Skeptics.)

However, back then, Selection Sunday was different. At 6pm, I’d lie down on the living room floor with a pen and a sheet of paper, resting against one of those uberthick magazines that my mom always got. As (Bryant/Greg/Barney) Gumbel read off the entries into this year’s college basketball bracket, I would scribble the names down furiously onto my own ad hoc grid. And I frickin’ meticulous. The lines were drawn with all of the straightness a yardstick could yield. (The bracket wasn’t so big that one required a yardstick, mind you, it’s just that growing up I could never find a ruler for the life of me and often resorted to pulling out the yardstick from behind the washing machine.) When Gumbel announced that Stanford would play Southwest Missouri State University, I would write out the whole name. Look, I was 10 years old. I had no idea if another team would make the tourney with the initials SWMSU.

And when it was all over, I would pore over the list schools with the eye of an actuary. I didn’t watch college basketball when I was that young, outside of an occasional Big 5 tilt or whenever Syracuse was on television. So I knew nothing. Other than that every March, all the teams got together in an organized list with rankings and records, and being a complete dork, this was fascinating to me.

You know, I could have waited until the next day to have a completed, error-free bracket courtesy of the local newspaper. Hell, my dad would even run copies of the thing so I’d have a dozen or so to keep me occupied (this was when I thought my dad was doing something completely illegal and cool, when in reality, making copies of personal stuff is probably the easiest office crime to commit.)

But now? Now we have the Internet.

For those who were unable to tune in to yesterday’s selection show, the bracket was probably on the internet mere minutes after the announcement. Gone are the days of yardstick brackets. Gone are the days of magazine theft. Gone are the days of non abbreviating Southwest Missouri State University. (Which, curiously, now goes by Missouri State. Way to defeat those other ordinally-directed Show-Me schools, you mighty Bears, you.)

Here are the days of YAB = You’re a Bracket II.

Last year when we ran this tournament, I think we had about 7 entries, and Mattias Caro walked away our champion. His trophy? We put his name over on the sidebar, for all to see, and to ensure that if somebody Googles him, they get our blog. This year? We promise more. If the tournament gets over 15 entries, there will be a prize for the victor. What, you may ask? Sure, you may ask. But we don’t know exactly what yet. Probably not an iPod, though.

Interested in being in yet another bracket pool? Join YAB = You’re a Bracket, which is being run by CBS Sportsline. I sent the info to a bunch of frequent readers a few minutes ago, but that by no means excludes you, random web surfer guy.

The Website! http://yab07.mayhem.sportsline.com/e
The Password! “condon” (without the quotation marks, Einstein.)

Thanks for playing. Go GW.

(Oh, one other note concerning the bracket. One of the biggest surprises yesterday was that the Drexel Dragons were left out despite a strong non-conference schedule and some big wins against some big schools. What may have been their nail in the coffin? Easy.)