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.)