ChicagoSportsBlogs : Non Compete

Good morning to my two favorite readers! It's a sunny day in the Chi and I must tell you, I had a great weekend. Thanks in part to my bracket in this year's NCAA Men's Tournament! I can report that I got the final four right! Every last one of them! This is the first time in my 15 years or so of filling out a bracket that I correctly picked more than 2 of the Final Four teams. Ahh, it feels good. But not that good, since my brother also seemed to pick the exact same teams. Great minds think alike. Now on to business:

Last week's “Strong Work” award goes to Xavier. Yes, I know they lost last night to Duke -- but How many of you thought this team would make the elite 8? Strong work fellas, be proud of your efforts.

This week you can expect some warm up for the baseball season, and the NFL draft. There are some interesting reports floating around about what the Bears are going to do in the draft. Also, we have some news on the Sox and the Cubs. Back in 5

Be forewarned sports fan and reader #2: I'm going to be “geeking it up“ in this post:

I realized half way through this past weekend of excellent basketball -- that I should build an NCAA bracket into .Text. Or something to that effect. Actually, what got me thinking about this was the fact that ESPN.com should provide web service interfaces to my stats and bracket crap. Hell, I would expose the FFL stuff too. Charge for it if you need to. Not per request please, but they already offer wireless alerts...If I could call a web service, like GetFinalFourTeams(UserID) I could drop it into a widget here -- I think they should get on it. Its not that hard.

Anyway, here they are : G Tech, Oki State, Duke (surprise), and UConn. Let's ask DePaul what they think of UConn's chances -- I think their heads are still spinning from that ass kicking they got on Saturday. But to be honest, if my alma mater made it and got their asses handed to them by UConn -- I wouldn't complain. I'd take that over sitting on my duff in the Chi.

For the first time in a year and half, I went out and played basketball with Shaj316 in the northwest 'burbs. Good group of guys in that gym. It was fun. But I am paying the price this morning. Everything hurts. It's a reminder I am no longer 18 years old and indestructible. What a buzz kill. I was so tired I forgot to take a picture of the facility. I think we're going to try to make it a weekly event, so I'll snap a picture and put it on the mo-blog next time I'm there.

Update on our bracket: The wife is still in first place. Even though she lost Kentucky yesterday to a scrappy UAB team. Shaj316 pulled into 3rd place, and I am in 5th place with a bunch of other bottom feeders. The one thing I will say is that I have the most potential points in our group. So let's see where it goes. Finally, kudos to the Illini for opening a can of whoop-ass on Cinci. I picked them to beat Cinci and drop to Duke, but they were overpowering in their win this weekend. We will quickly find out if they have anything left in the tank, come Friday. Back in 5. 

After a tough first round of games, I am sitting in third place. I'm not worried. Why? Because my wife is in first place. Which means that after this weekend we will both be sitting in the bottom of our pool in last place. I'd like to mention what a great job the folks at ESPN.com have done with these year's tourney setup. The interface is clean, the flash control is still the best in the business, and so far I have not been running into the dreaded “SERVER TO BUSY” errors. This week's “Strong Work” award goes to the ESPN.com crew.

On to business: The UIC Flames. Can someone explain to me what exactly happened? No? Well, then let me take a stab at it. The Flames had no game plan. At least none that I could discern from that horrible game last night. Kansas was so much bigger than UIC, you'd think coach Collins would have figured out a away to avoid them. Instead, I had to watch Bailey and Banks take their skinny sub 6 foot height into the paint against monster power forwards and a center who never left his feet to stuff their shot attempts. The running around with your head cut off offense was a joke. They tried to run Kansas out of the gym, but the goal of the game is to SCORE POINTS. No offense whatsoever from the pathetic flames. They were simply outclasses. Kudos to coach Self for reminding Jimmy Collins that COACHING basketball means more than rolling the ball out on the court. Or buying your players dinner and SUV's. (hah!) Kansas had a real offense. They ran REAL plays. They dunked on UIC's ass like every play. They ran with them, they defended them tightly, and they made some spectacular plays that just blew the Flames out.

It's painfully obvious that recruiting the city is one thing, but coaching a group of raw-talent-having kids on the nuances of the game is another.

After an interesting day of tournament action, I am standing atop of the mountain
in our group. I scored 140 points, and to be honest, I was 5 seconds away from being
in last place. The king always stands on shaky ground this early in the game...

So lets give a big round of applause to DePaul for figuring out that Diener is the man.
The kid dropped 28 points on Dayton, 10 of which came in the second overtime. The beginning of this game was brutal. Both teams were shitting themselves in the first 15 minutes. Ah well, at least they advance and get a chance to see what Connecticut's Okefor is capable of. (hint: destruction).

Finally, is anyone really surprised that the Jaspers spanked Florida, and that
Michigan State fell apart at the end of last night's game against Nevada? Nevada??!?! You have got to be kidding me. Let's all hope the Illini don't blow it against a Murray State team under house arrest. If they do, we should finally give in and remove Chief Illiniwek as the team mascot, and instead pick Strawberry Shortcake.

Courtesy of me, back in the consulting days, via Shaj316:

Another day, another Journey. 

And today's journey  is to reach the top of the mountain.

To be king of the mountain.

Today gentlemen, is a day when you are allowed to be mad.
 
Today my friends, begins, March Madness.
 
Good luck to our favorite warriors, may their victories be as profitable as ours.
 
:)

Mark Cuban has a blog. Read it here. I must say, as a fan of the horrible Chicago Bulls, I am really jealous of the organization Cuban is running. He seems a tad crazy at times, but I think this is either him showboating for the cameras , or it's the reporters screwing him. He is an honest man, and a pretty good businessman and marketer from what I gather. It will be fun to see him debunk the spin that normal journalists put on what he says.
He is going to set the bar for open communication from the CEO's office. In fact, I actually had mentioned using a blog in a number of ways that would have helped my last employer. Of course, the idiot running the department didn't "get it" and neither did anyone else who heard my idea. Maybe I'll mention it to an audience that will be more receptive...

One article in particular takes one of our most “controversial“ sports writers to task : Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune. So Mr. Cuban doesn't like Sam. I would imagine he isn't the only one, fans included. But it sells papers. A note to Mr. Cuban: sites like Chicagosplogs.com exist to fill a gap that the Sam Smith's of the world have left open (even if by force, from his employer). The true fans perspective. We range from the super rich, taken advantage of, season ticket holder (Bears PSL anyone?), to the bandwagon Cubs fan storming Waveland Ave.

Plus you validate our existence with comments like this: “ He knows he is a malicious liar “ -- He knows how to play the sports media game. Well, I don't know how to play the sports media game. At all. I think that deficiency is an advantage. I like your ideas Mr.Cuban...you might be onto something. Consider yourself subscribed.

It's not something that is going to win awards, but I changed the style sheets for the aggregate page on ChicagoSplogs.com. I haven't had time for a total revamp -- besides I want to create a new .Text skin for my personal blog, not to mention upgrade to .96 this weekend. So all credit for the headaches you get from this crap interface go to me. The logo on the other hand is one of many we will be using, and they come courtesy of a brilliant artist, Mike Lister. Kudos to Mike for coming up with a cool logo for us. Leave us some feedback, grab a pint and let enjoy the ride.

Just a reminder: get your brackets into that pool in the office by Thursday morning!

See you in 5

Well, selection Sunday is over and a hearty congrats go to UIC, SIU, DePaul, The Illini, and even Valpo (who I could care less about). The folks at the NCAA have made it official : THE BIG TEN SUCKS. Jesus, this is depressing. Growing up in a “Big-Ten” state where we grew accustomed to 5-6 teams in the dance a year -- this is a disgrace. It's hard to swallow too. The state of basketball in this great conference is pathetic. Conference USA has 6 teams this year fellas -- Get on the ball already. Recruit better. Make a shot! I'm tired of seeing the best candidates out of Chicago go to Duke and Carolina. Enough ranting -- Good luck to all 3 teams from the Big Ten.

Finally -- there are rumors that Loyola is looking at Joey Meyer for its now vacant mens basketball coaching job. I think we need someone with more city cred than Mr. Meyer. Coach Collins has something like 7 kids from the CPS League. 2 of which (Bailey and Banks) were teammates in high school and lost something like 3 games total in their entire careers.....You think Joey can out recruit Collins in the city? I doubt it.

One more thing: I was right about Kansas and UIC meeting up. You'd think I was on the committee. :)

Well, well, well! The City has its official first team in the Big Dance this year! Congrats to the Flames and coach Collins for putting together a pretty good season. Enjoy your 12th seed fellas!(my prediction, as well as the coach's). Here's to hoping you draw someone like Kansas and the former Illini coach Mr. Self.

On an aside: I'm getting busier and busier lately. And my redesign has been lagging. But I promise I will sit down and upgrade our .Text engine to the “almost” latest and greatest. We have a new logo, which is awesome (since a real designer did it for us) and a new site design which will be crap(because I am doing it). But both of our readers probably use an RSS aggregator, so the interface doesn't really matter! Finally -- until I get my own Mobile Blog or “Photo-Blog” up and running here, I have setup one at Text America, here. Enjoy!