NCAA Tournament Prediction Contest

Most of you probably know that I love the NCAA basketball tournament, especially the first two days. I'd like it more if my BYU cougars would ever win a game in the Big Dance, but whatever.

If you would like to join my prediction group, it is available to be joined! Go to ESPN.com, click on "fantasy," create an entry, and enter my group. My group name is "Wine and Cheese." The password is "maggie".

You can invite anyone that you want to join my group. But I request that you only submit one entry per person. If there's one thing I can't stand, it is when somebody submits ten different predictions then gets excited when one of them happens to be good. No, only one bracket per person. It's all or nothing.

For comparative purposes, I have included four additional brackets. There is a coin flip bracket, a top seed bracket, an RPI bracket, and a mascot bracket. On the Tuesday before the Big Dance tips off, I will post the results of the mascot bracket.

I named the group "wine and cheese" because members of the Young Family who join the competition play for the famed wine & cheese plate. It is a platter that I was given at a white elephant gift exchange a few years ago. This is the fourth year it will be passed along. My little brother Ryan won it the first two years, but it is now in my possession after I picked Florida to go all the way last year. I hope to retain it; it is a beautiful platter that my wife just adores (it has been hiding on the top shelf of our office closet all year long).

This week is the Mountain West Conference basketball tournament, otherwise known as the UNLV Home Court Advantage. Here are my predictions:

Wednesday (first round): Wyoming over Colorado State
Thursday (quarterfinals): BYU over Wyoming (after the game, Heath Schroyer will complain about the refs); UNLV over TCU; Utah over New Mexico; and San Diego State over Air Force.
Friday (semifinals): BYU over San Diego State (after the game, Steve Fisher complains about the refs); Utah beats UNLV.
Saturday (championship game): BYU over Utah (after the game, Jim Boylen's head literally explodes as he complains about the free throw discrepancy).

Also, I would also like to apologize about the lack of Joe Rankings at the end of the year. I did tabulate the Final Rankings, but it was late in coming. It was a perfect storm of busy-ness at school, work, and home. Next year will be better, I promise. In case you couldn't have guessed, LSU won the JRC (or Joe Rankings Championship which has just as much merit, by the way, as the BCS). Congratulations, Gary Crowton!