BRACKET BUSTING

Isn’t it ironic that for the past two or three weeks we have been listening to ESPN Sportscenter “experts” and sports talk radio hosts analyze the NCAA Tournament ad nauseum to get some handle on how to pick our brackets for the office pool and yet we – like they – have seen those pools go up in smoke?

Wake Forest.

Kansas.

Syracuse.

Connecticut.

Man, these teams were supposed to carry us to the Final Four. The only people who have anything to look forward to are those who stuck behind Illinois, Duke and North Carolina and those who started to ride dark horses like Oklahoma State.

I feel bad for my son. He was so high on Wake Forest and liked the way Syracuse crushed UConn in the Big East Tournament that he put all of his bracket eggs in those two baskets. When Syracuse went down, I said, “Don’t worry – no one else in our pool has Wake Forest going all the way. You have a chance.” And the next day, Wake Forest was gone.

My youngest son (he’s 10) stuck pretty close to the seeds and now he leads our pool (which should tell us something), but because he liked Connecticut to win it all he seems to be floundering.

What the heck happened?

Well, whatever it was it is what makes this tournament the most exciting sporting event in the country. Anything can happen at anytime and if you think you know what’s going on you’re dead wrong.

McGWIRE

Mark McGwire used to be larger than life.

Everyone – not just baseball fans – knew who he was. With those prodigious arms and equally prodigious home run blasts he captured the imagination of an entire nation and gave sports fans in 1998 one of the greatest summers ever.

Six years later …

His performance at the congressional hearings on steroids was an utter disgrace and while sports fans might have been hoping for too much if they had been hoping he would freely admit to using steroids, at least they were owed something more than his flimsy and pathetic evasion of the questions directly asked of him.

McGwire may have a legitimate point that he was in a no-win situation and that if he denied using steroids no one would believe him and if he admitted to it he would be opening his family up to widespread abuse and ridicule.

And so his lawyers, no doubt, directed him to say, “I’m retired – I want to look towards the future instead of to the past.”

Oh, great advice. In the court of public opinion, that is an admission of guilt whether or not there is any proof at all that McGwire used performance-enhancing drugs.

It simply infuriates me that so few people accept personal responsibility for their actions and that, in fact, accepting personal responsibility is a virtue fast becoming extinct. And the fact that McGwire won’t stand up and speak plainly about the allegations is even worse than the prevailing belief that, yes, he cheated.

BONDS DONE?

Almost as troubling as not accepting personal responsibility is blaming someone else for your trouble and that is just what Barry Bonds is doing this week as he comes to grips with the fact that his season is in jeopardy

Bonds just underwent his second knee surgery and could be done for the year, but he blames that – and all the other stuff – on the media.

“My son and I are just going to enjoy our lives,” he said in new reports. “You guys wanted to hurt me bad enough, you finally got me. I’m mentally drained. I’m tired of my kids crying.”

Bonds wants to blame the media for his troubles and I guess it is the media’s fault that none of his teammates like him, that few of the fans like him, that he got mixed up in a relationship with another woman, that he hooked up with the wrong trainer and that he “unknowingly” took steroids which may or may not have enhanced his performance.

Boo hoo. Even if he doesn’t play this year or next, the San Francisco Giants (who had a provision in Bonds’ contract to void 2006 should he fail to make 500 plate appearances in 2005, but then dropped it from the contract) will still owe him $36 million.

But if Bonds does not play again, or is limited enough that Hank Aaron’s record is simply too far for him to go, that could be a blessing in disguise – for him, for baseball, and for the fans. Just imagine what it would be like, with all the allegations and suppositions about Bonds, if he should come within a few home runs of the record.

 It would be awkward to say the least.