Two in the easy, one in the sleazy

Ahhh, March Madness. It's been three straight days of couch potato-ness, being inundated with buzzer-beaters, upsets and ads about how coach K REALLY loves chevys.
My new favourite team, the Wichita State Shockers, rallied to beat No. 2 seed Tennessee on Saturday. I mean, how can you not root for a team like the Shockers?
Their name, officially, comes from the "Shocking" or harvesting of Wheat. But for anyone under the age of 40, it has a different connotation.

Anyways, here's the column I wrote for Friday's paper. Nothing that will win me a Pulizter Prize, but at least it's basketball-related.

SINKING YOUR TEETH INTO MARCH MADNESS

Pssst . . . Hey. No, don’t look. Pretend you’re working, like I am. Is the boss gone? Good. Just let me hide the WHL standings I was pretending to examine so studiously, and . . . voila! Check it out — March Madness, straight to your computer screen. Live video streaming of all the opening-round games from the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, complete with stats, highlights, commentary and all the buzzer-beaters, thanks to CBS.
I’ve spent the better part of my shift clicking from game to game, watching budding stars like Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison — replete with his porn-star mustache and 70s hair-do — compete in the tournament that causes the work productivity level across the globe to drop.
Don’t believe me? While only 47,000 other viewers were online (at cbs.sportsline.com/mmod) with me late in the day, enough people logged into the network earlier in the day that the increased bandwidth caused a temporary internet crash up and down the U.S. Eastern seaboard.
March Madness is more than an annual event for basketball fans. It used to mean you had to come up with some outlandish, yet believable,
excuse for not being at work. Now, thanks to the Internet, we can all keep that window on your desktop running all day.
The lure of the tournament is obvious. Everyone loves an underdog, and nobody roots for Goliath (Duke), unless you’re the type of person who longs to spoon with your favourite New England Patriots/New York Yankees/Blue Devils player.
March Madness has already wreaked enough havoc on my schedule. I was 10 minutes late for my dentist’s appointment Thursday because I was too busy watching Pacific push Boston College to the brink.
I dashed out of my house with a minute left in the game, and B.C. up four. I sped down Gordon like Tony Stewart at Daytona, then pulled an illegal and dangerous U-turn into the parking lot at the Kelowna Dental Centre.
After plopping myself in the indicated chair, I did a little begging, some pleading and batted my big ol’ brown puppy-dog eyes and got the TV on the wall turned on. Yes! I was back in the Madness. And madness it was — I watched B.C., a fourth seed, get taken to double overtime by the upstart Tigers of Pacific.
You want buzzer-beaters? How about Tennessee’s Chris Lofton, who dropped a 20-foot, fade-away three-pointer with 0.4 seconds left to beat Winthrop 63-61, keeping the Volunteers from being just the 15th No. 2 seed to be beaten by a 15th seed.
(At that point, I flung both arms up in disbelief, knocking over my dentist’s tray of instruments, sending expensive tools flying around the room. Really. It was added to my bill.)
You want great team names? How about the Wichita State Shockers — 86-66 victors over Seton Hall in the first round. I’ll let you make the jokes, but you can guess what hand signal the all the fans in the stands make. You want upsets? You’re practically guaranteed one every year. This time around, it was Montana, who ended Nevada’s 14-game winning streak. The win meant that a 12th seed has upset a fifth seed every year since 1985, with the exception of 1988 and 2000.
And if you’re my boss, you want me to work. So I’m back to looking busy. The Madness continues.