Brent's Blog

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- Good news about our image around the world. I’m sure it will get even better come January.
- Internet companies are so cheap to start, venture capitalists are having trouble finding anyone who wants their money.
- On a related note, here’s a fascinating story about the guy who does Stuff White People Like. He just signed a book deal worth an estimated $300,000. Signed up for a free blog, wrote some content, got a book deal. Just like that.
- That parachute wasn’t D.B. Cooper’s. I hate it when the news lets me down.

- I heard about this yesterday, but didn’t realized that the UNC-G professor knocked off his bike by a woman texting while driving is a known advocate for bikers’ rights. Jeez.
- I promise I won’t write about the Rangers all summer, but the aforementioned Josh Hamilton played the hero last night in his second game on the team.
- Ted Turner has brought his considerable intellect to the global warming debate. Turner would be the human whose opinion matters least to me were it not for the existence of Geraldo Rivera and Rosie O’Donnell.

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- Good new source of oil? How are going to refine it?
- Here’s a list of April Fool’s jokes today. At the T-N, we were greeted by a sign on the bathroom doors saying “Effective immediately, the Times-News will no longer be providing toilet paper for employees. Please bring your own - Management.” That was my line.
- I used to be amazed by the Asian students in my high school who were so good at pen-spinning. I could never get anywhere near them. Here’s a page from the tournament in Japan with video.

- Now that we’ve hit the sports dead period, I need to start writing some more about McCain. Here’s a collection of editorial cartoons about him.
- It was another inauspicious beginning for we long-suffering fans of the Texas Rangers. If nothing else, I’ll enjoy watching Josh Hamilton, the pride of my wife’s high school, Athens Drive High in Raleigh. If you don’t know about Hamilton, it’s a great story about a young man who turned his life around.

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- How did I miss the fact that there’s a preview of the second X Files movie out?
- To be the man, you’ve got to beat the man! WOOOO!
- I’m tired of being bullied online, too.
- Thank you, Captain Obvious.

- Does Hillary stand a chance or not? This guy says no, and gives 10 reasons people seem to think she’s still in it.
- Nice list of useful Web sites.
- Another look at this business I love so well.

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- The ten greatest opening credits in movie history. Though this link is clean, the site this list is part of has some adult content. So if you click through, don’t blame me.
- Allen & Sons in Chapel Hill recognized by Esquire as having the best chopped pork sandwich in America. Discuss.
- Wall Street Journal’s take on North Carolina’s role in the Democratic contest.

- I love old pulp covers.
- I’m always interested in the peak oil debate.
- Think we’ve got corruption problems in state government? Seems like things are always worse in Alabama.

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- A second shooter in the Kennedy assassination? No, not that one.
- I lost a lot of interest in YouTube when they had to take down copyrighted content. Not quite sure about this site yet but it sure seems interesting. You can watch a lot of movies and television episodes for free. Here’s Slate’s take on Hulu.com.
- Adobe is now giving away a free version of Photoshop online.

- Carolina Journal requested e-mail records from the head of Easley’s new e-mail review panel and hasn’t gotten anything in two weeks. That’s funny enough, but my favorite part is this line …
“The governor’s office says it is having difficulty answering the request because the administration apparently does not save e-mails in an electronic format, but, instead, files printed copies by subject and not by date.”
Only the state would print out e-mails and file them away.
- If you watched the NCAA Tournament over the weekend, you were probably asking the guy sitting next to you how Stephen Curry ended up at Davidson. The Fayetteville Observer has a good look at why.
- Beer taps at your table? Brent approves.

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- Thank you, Chalita N. Thomas, for doing your part to make my native state look like the most backwards, ignorant, no-count swamp in all the Union. You’ll take your place along with Mike Nifong, Jim Black, and the sheriff of Onslow County in the North Carolina Sucks Hall of Fame.
- Time blog Swampland has interesting thoughts on the Internet effect on news.
- $$#&&% Commies are in our *(%@!# airspace.

- For my money, the best story of the year is the revival of the D.B. Cooper saga.
- Mecklenburg County is on pace to have all of its available land developed in 25 years. Wow.

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- The saga in Albany just keeps getting better. Now the blind New York governor has admitted to cocaine use.

- John Hood at the Locke Foundation has a column on Bill Graham, the Republican candidate for governor, who is scheduled to come by the newspaper today.
- Kevin Connolly was born without legs. He takes photos of people staring at him and made art out of it.
- Looks like someone at Slate agrees with me about boycotting the Olympics.
- I don’t understand this but it seems important.

- The Wall Street Journal is trumpeting a Pentagon report that pores through Saddam Hussein’s documents and finds he was open to working with Islamic terrorists. But there’s still no Al-Qaeda link and if he wanted to work with Bin Laden, he still didn’t have much of anything to give him weapons-wise. The interesting thing to me is that, just as the WSJ editorial board says, no one is covering the report. I had to go to Australia to find a story.
- The New York Post has a look at the new Yankee Stadium.
- We might finally start drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge.

- Listen to Brent favorite Zooey Deschanel play live at South by Southwest with M. Ward. Their project is called She & Him and they have a new record.

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- I’m a sucker for a good dog story.

- Since the first time I walked around Epcot, I’ve been dissapointed in the way things were supposed to be. Here’s a prediction from Mechanic Illustrated in 1968 about how 2008 would be. I want my flying car!
- Metaspy has long been one of my favorite things on the Internet. See what people are searching for as they search. There are clean and unfiltered versions to choose from.
- I didn’t get excited about the Transformers movie, but I’m hugely psyched for the G.I. Joe movie after pictures of Snake Eyes were revealed.

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Leave the gambling behind’ NCAA Tournament too good for that

“One of these years I’m not going to fill out a bracket and just enjoy it,” a newsroomer said Thursday afternoon as the opening round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament began.

Bleary-eyed gambling addicts, sleepless from nights spent tooling and retooling their sheets, nervously cruised by the newsroom television to check the Georgia-Xavier early-afternoon tilt.

Not me.

I haven’t taken part in an NCAA pool in several years. I decided that since I had never won any money anyway, and betting on sports undermines my allegiances, I should stay away from bracketmania. Besides, I don’t think the Lord wants me to gamble and I have enough to answer to him for.

Year after year, I would refuse, out of principle, to ever pick the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to win even a single game in the NCAA Tournament, and year after year they would cruise to at least the Elite 8 and my bracket would go down the tubes.

So one year, it was 1999 to be exact, I decided this was ridiculous. Instead of wasting money, I picked Carolina to do pretty well. They lost to Weber State in the first round of the tournament.

So I realized that I was not meant to make money on the NCAA Tournament. And now I realize it’s for a bigger reason than the ones I listed above.

The men’s tournament is the greatest event in American sports, maybe one of the greatest things in America, period. And what makes it so great, and so unusual, is that it’s better at the beginning than it is in the end.

In the first two days, 64 great teams play 32 games. The tournament continues to be great through the weekend and in the second weekend. The Final Four, though, can be kind of disappointing, and the actual national championship game almost never lives up to the hype.

Seems nothing in life is pure any more, but for a sports fan, the NCAA Tournament is one of purest things we have left. Maybe I think that betting on it sullies something beautiful.

Consider our sorry times. Most professional sports are dominated by the large-market teams that can afford to pay the big-name players. Professional athletes take performance-enhancing drugs and commit serious crimes. College football suffers under an illogical system that crowns an illegitimate champion. The NHL still exists.

In the NCAA Tournament, teams written off as not having a chance can literally slay giants. Play six great games in a row, and you can hang a banner against improbable odds, as Jim Valvano and his N.C. State team and Rollie Massimino and his Villanova boys did when I was a kid.

Two years ago, 11th-seeded George Mason went to the Final Four. It was like watching a Disney movie.

Since my son is adopted and is not related by blood to me, he might have a chance of being halfway athletic.

But even if he’s not great at anything, I’ll still get him involved in sports because of all the things it teaches. He’ll learn to work with others as a team. He’ll learn to deal with frustration, defeat, and not getting what he wants. He’ll stay in shape. He’ll learn how to have the nerve to take the winning shot, whether he hits or not.

And when I teach him about sports, I’ll teach him that it’s not perfect, that athletes aren’t heroes any more than I am, that cheating is always wrong, and that winning isn’t always everything.

And I’ll teach him that the first two days of the NCAA Tournament are what it’s all about.

So you don’t bet on it.

Got this response by e-mai.

Your article about NCAA tournament is a bunch of BS. If you believe basketball at the College level is pure then you are an asinine individual! College basketball as with other sports(?) has degenerated into a very rough sport that is not anyway the sport it was years ago! The dunk shot years ago was not legal (touching the rim of the goal was a foul)! There are numerous charging fouls that are not even called and a team can win games on getting an official that can only see fouls for one team. I watched an NCCA basketball game a few weeks ago (not either team was a team that I favor) in which one team had a lopsided free throw score that was not exactly the result of very good officiating! There is a definite problem with officiating in most sports, and it can cause any team in any sport to lose close games.

As for college football crowing an illegitimate champion (?), evidently that is because a team you favor usually get there asses whipped in that sport! If an Atlantic Coast Conference team especially UNC would get that national championship under the existing illogical system then that would be okay I suppose. Mr. Lancaster you are not unlike most people that report news and write. That is your opinion is usually so biased it is not good enough to be published in any newspaper or sports magazine!

I, dear reader, do not pull for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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I’m going to the mountains on Good Friday. Enjoy the holiday.

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