The SoapBoxers

Unbeknownst to many people, there are two NCAA basketball tournaments underway. Everyone knows about the men’s tournament, of course. There is also a women’s NCAA tournament underway.

The women’s tourney has had some interesting games already. #2 seed Baylor had to go to overtime in the first round again #15 seed Texas San Antonio and escaped with a two point win against #9 seed South Dakota State in the second round. #1 seed Duke was beaten by #9 seed Michigan State in the second round. Texas A&M had 20, yes 20, steals in a win against Minnesota. #7 seed Rutgers clobbered #2 seed Auburn in the second round, although it’s difficult to list a C. Vivian Stringer win as an upset, ever.

Perhaps the biggest shock of the tournament was the early exit of two time defending champion Tennessee. Tennessee was a very young team, with a “low” #5 seed as a result. However, Tennessee had never lost a first or second round NCAA game, so their opening round loss to #12 Tennessee was a stunner.

My alma mater, Iowa State, is in the Sweet 16. The #4 seed Cyclones won handily in the first round, tying a tournament record with 16 three pointers in a rout against East Tennessee State. Oddly, South Dakota State also tied the tournament record in their win against TCU. The Cyclones road in the tournament has been smoothed a bit by upsets. In round two, they faced #12 seed Ball State (instead of #5 seed Tennessee). Ball State hung around for quite a while, but Iowa State pulled away in the end. In the next round, the Cyclones will face #9 seed Michigan State instead of #1 seed Duke. Can this be a Final Four run for Iowa State? I sure hope so.

I have been to at least four NCAA women’s tournaments (my memory is getting hazy with age – was there a fifth tournament?) – three times to first/second round game and once to third/fourth round games. The tickets are much cheaper than men’s tickets and much easier to get. Some of the cities that get the women’s games would never have a chance at men’s tournament games.

I really enjoy the atmosphere of the tournament. The game on the floor is good, too. The women’s game is a lot more true to the fundamentals instead of the highlight show that the men’s games can turn into.

My best moment from an NCAA tourney was when I had to sell some unused tickets (I bought extras anticipating that some friends would be able to join me). I sold for below face value and was honest about the fact that the seats were not very close to midcourt. The couple that bought the tickets was actually happy with the location. Their son was a band director (or something similar) and the seats gave them a great view of him.

Sneak peak ahead
Details will soon be unveiled about a contest that will feature some popular personal finance bloggers as contestants.

Today, I’m going to provide a few tips on car safety. I’m far from a automotive expert, but I have picked up a few things over the years.

AAA is great to have, but do you want to be completely at their mercy? Changing a tire was a mandatory part of the curriculum in Driver’s Ed when I was in school.

When pulling over to the side of the road, pull over to the side of the road that shields you best from oncoming traffic. You want to be as far from the traffic as possible. I goofed once and pulled over to the wrong side – it is pretty harrowing to have semis whizzing by at 70 mph when you’re changing a tire.

Keep something in the trunk that will allow you to clean up after changing a tire. I hate getting dirty hands on my car interior. Paper towels and bottled water work great. Additionally, the bottled water can be used for drinking if you are stranded. Baby wipes also work very well.

The jacks that come with today’s cars, quite honestly, suck. Spend a few extra dollars and get a hydraulic jack. I have a bottle jack in the trunk of both of our cars. I think they cost me around $20 each. One of the jacks has unfortunately been used quite a few times. It is much easier to work with than the jacks that come with the cars. Bottle jacks are quite small and should fit in a crevice of your trunk.

Always carry a set of jumper cables in your car. If you have a dead battery, someone else might have cables, but why leave it to chance? Also, if your battery is showing any signs that it may be dying, replace it! Batteries aren’t cheap, but do you really want to be stranded in a parking lot in the freezing cold because you were trying to squeeze another year out of an aging battery? Don’t be penny wise and pound-foolish.

Replace your windshield wiper blades at least once a year. If your car is outside a lot, they might need to be replaced more often. I replace mine in late fall to ensure that I have new blades during the winter. Blades are pretty cheap, and they are pretty easy to install once you figure out the trick. Don’t throw away the old blades – toss them in the trunk. They take up virtually no room, and come in very handy in an emergency if you break a blade while scraping ice from the windshield. Not that this has ever happened to me, of course …

I really hate to say this. I would hope that the vast majority of people that pull over to offer aid are truly trying to help. However, it is prudent to stay alert in case of predators. On the flip side, you should also exercise caution if you are the person stopping to give aid. Most likely, the person actually is a motorist having a problem – but be wary of a carjack scam.

I began college in 1993. Holy cow, that’s more than 15 years ago … how time flies.

Anyway, back in 1993, the world wide web was in its very infancy. The number of web sites were a tiny fraction of what is available today. The sites that did exist were mostly text based, with occasional pictures.

During this time, I became familiar with Mosaic (the precursor to Netscape, which was in turn the precursor to Mozilla and Firefox). However. Most of the time, however, the actual computers on campus were occupied. I would often hang out in little rooms that had some dumb terminals that would allow me to connect to the university’s UNIX network. However, the functionality of these terminals was purely text-based activities. I could check email, chat online on IRC (on a channel with the friendly name of “love2chat”), and even surf the web. It wasn’t pretty, but it was functional.

In the fall of 1994, I became disappointed with the lack of information about the country music group Alabama on the web. I took it upon myself to launch a website. In 1994, this was a lot more work than it is today. After entering some cryptic UNIX commands, I eventually had a web site. I went to work. The first thing I did was to create a discography that listed every Alabama album. I gave a short review of the album and rated each song on a star scale (5 being the highest, I believe).

Over the next couple of years, this became a labor of love. With the assistance from Sly in the computing center, the site grew and attracted thousands of visitors per month. Eventually, the web site was migrated to its own domain (alabamafans.com) and Sly and I became full partners on the site. We had a email list of people who shared memories and opinions of the group. We even had some song snippets in a new format called “MPEG-1 audio layer 3”. The format was not universally known at that time, so we had links to sites where people could download software to play these files. MP3, as it is now known, has become a bit more popular over the years.

From a financial perspective, the timing was horrible. Hosting fees were much higher than they are now, and we weren’t able to get donations through Paypal – because Paypal did not exist. We poured hundreds of dollars a year into what was essentially free advertising for a very successful band. Was it worth it? Certainly. The interaction with other fans over the years was a great reward. My memorabilia collection grew, as a few folks sold things to “the guy who runs the site.”

The crowning moment, though, was the Illinois State fair in 1997. I had just moved to Illinois after graduating from college (and have since moved back to Iowa). I learned that Alabama would be at the fair. A couple years earlier, a guy who worked with Alabama saw the site, liked it, and told me to come backstage if I was ever at a concert. I gave a note to a security guard (and crossed my fingers) and he relayed it to the guy. Within minutes, I was back stage.

Although I didn’t get to formally meet Randy, Teddy, Jeff, and Mark, I did get to meet several of the musicians who played with them. I was in the middle of the stage chatting with people shortly before the concert was scheduled to begin.

As the time of the concert became imminent, my friend said something to the effect of “hey, I bet your seat is in the nosebleeds. I can find you something better.” He pulled up a stool on the side of the stage and I sat there – mere feet from the stage – during the entire show. Kenny Chesney was the opener and Alabama had a great show.  Jeff Cook changes instruments a LOT, by the way – he passed by me every time he needed a different one.  Afterward, my friend gave me the drumsticks that were used during the show.

What ever happened to the alabamafans.com website? It no longer exists. Eventually, Alabama, like every other organization, had its own official site, and my site was redundant – but it was a lot of fun while it lasted.

This is the final installment in a three part series.

In the past decade, the majority of my sports focus has been on baseball. I had lost interest in the NBA in the 90s. I am still a fan of the NFL and college football and basketball, but my interest has cooled over the years and is now truly seasonal. On the other hand, baseball has slowly become a year-round sport for me. There really is no off-season. The November – March timeframe is packed with all sorts of activity – winterball, free agency, salary arbitration, and spring training, to name a few.

My first major step in this direction was joining – and winning – my first fantasy baseball league in 1998. I was 23 at the time, so I was a bit of a late starter. The fantasy league opened my eyes to the other 29 teams in the league, and I became a fan of the sport, instead of merely a fan of certain teams and players.

I still play fantasy baseball. However, neither of my leagues has a traditional format. My pride and joy is my own creation – a league in which a team cannot start two players whose last names begin with the same letter of the alphabet (for example Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez). This completely changes the values of players. The other league is a keeper league where we carry forward the entire roster from one year to the next. At the outset, I drafted a team almost entirely of prospects. I had a horrible first year, since none my players had substantial at bats or innings. In year two (last year) I won the regular season title (although I did lose in the playoffs).

In addition to fantasy, I also play in a sim league. A friend of mine described this as a baseball version of Dungeons and Dragons. You draft and develop fake players. The league commish use the Mogul computer game as the main engine for the league, but has added a ton of custom features. There are 32 people spread across the US who manage teams in the league. Everyone has different draft, development, and trade preferences, resulting in a league that is a lot of fun and very unpredictable at times.

I read about baseball a lot, especially during the seasons. I have books related to the economics of baseball, the physics of baseball, and everything in between. A topic of particular interest to me recently is the ability to distinguish between talent and luck. It is possible to dissect a player’s statistics and theorize whether a player had a great year because his skills suddenly took a step forward, or if the performance was due more to good luck. I also read a lot of online content, and of course I subscribe to Sports Weekly.

2007 featured the greatest baseball moment of my fanhood, as my Colorado Rockies won 21 of 22 games and put themselves in their – and my – very first World Series. They game up short, but surely a World Series title is just around the corner.

At this point in my fanhood, I am ankle deep into most sports and neck deep into baseball. I’m not quite over my head – yet.

Update: After writing this, and before it was published, the baseball sim league became a casualty of my attempt to juggle too many things at once. Quite honestly, this blog has begun to drain quite a bit of my spare time, and I was forced to make a tough decision.

How many people make more than $250,000 per year?

The short answer: based on information from the IRS, fewer than 3% of tax returns (3.924 million returns out of 140+ million total returns) claimed more than $200,000 in adjusted gross income (AGI) in tax year 2009 (more current data is not available). By definition, the number making more than $250,000 must be less than 3% (since some will fall in the range between $200,000 and $250,000.)

The long answer is pretty long – more than a thousand words long, judging by the length of this article. While I am not a CPA , or even a practicing accountant, I do have a degree in accounting and thoroughly enjoyed my income tax courses in college (yep, glutton for punishment). I’ll make an effort not to get too bogged down in technical terms in this article.

Why the question?
For whatever reason, $250,000 has become a benchmark amount. During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama had a tax plan that would raise taxes on couples making more than $250,000. A bit later, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would impose a 90% tax for recipients of bonuses paid by companies that received bailout funds. This tax would be imposed on people making more than $250,000.

Why the source?
The IRS is in the business of determining how much money people make and have a vested interest in the accuracy of their data. I have a synopsis of their data in the table at the end of the post, and have also linked directly to their spreadsheet.

Definition of terms
Household – I am defining a household as any entity that filed a tax return. Note that people who do not have a tax liability are not required to file a tax return. These people tend to be on the low end of the income spectrum.

Income – This is definitely the tricky term. There are a few different things we could measure.

• Total income (line 22 of form 1040). Essentially, this is the result of adding up the money that comes in from all sources during the year – with the exclusion of tax-exempt interest income and the tax-exempt portion of some retirement benefits. This does include capital gains and business income (or loss). This is the largest of the three amounts I will describe.
• Adjusted gross income (AGI) (line 37 of form 1040). This is total income with a few deductions. For the typical person, the deductions would be for student loan interest as well as contributions to retirement accounts and health savings accounts. This amount will be smaller than total income, and this is what is used in the IRS statistics that I have used as my source.
• Taxable income (line 43 of form 1040). This is determined by taking the AGI, subtracting either the standard or itemized deduction, and then also subtracting the amount for exemptions (for tax year 2008, you would multiply $3500 X the number of exemptions – basically, the number of people in your household – and subtract this amount from the AGI.) Taxable income is used to determine your marginal tax rate. (Note: the marginal rate is the rate that is applied to the top slice of your income – it is not applied to your entire income. Income is taxed on a stair step basis, with each chunk of income taxed at a higher rate). In the case of Obama’s tax plan, he would be referring to $250,000 in taxable income, not total income or AGI.

You can quibble with the numbers a bit. You may claim that some people cheat on their taxes, so that the number of people who SHOULD be claiming an AGI of $250,000 is higher than the amount that actually do. You may claim that full-time students or single people should not be counted as households (of course, that argument could be countered by the argument that there are valid households that are not filing tax returns). However, it seems unlikely that you’re going to move the needle very much. The fact of the matter is that very few households earn more than $250,000.

Legend
Column 1 – Range of adjusted gross income
Column 2 – Number of returns that fall into this range
Column 3 – Percentage of total returns
Column 4 – Cumulative percentage (percent of return that have this AGI or lower)
Column 5 – Percentage of returns that are above this range
Column 6 – Number of exemptions per return

Columns 1 and 2 are taken directly from the IRS spreadsheet. The other columns are calculations based on information from the IRS spreadsheet.

 
Editor’s note: this has become a very popular article. It has been nearly 2 1/2 years since its initial publication. At the time of publication, I used the most current data from the IRS – numbers from the 2006 tax year. On August 8, 2011, I refreshed this article with more current data, this time from the 2009 tax year. If you find this article useful, please help support this site by buying some items using the Amazon links on this page. The Soap Boxers contains articles on a number of topics – come back often! – Kosmo

About ten years ago, I started driving my friends crazy with the idea of wireless electricity. This idea sprang mostly from an annoyance for electrical outlets and electrical cords. Why can’t I just place an electronic device at point X and have the electricity streamed to it through the air – with no need for messy cords.

A couple of years ago, MIT announced that they had been able to successfully transmit electricity wirelessly (which they call WiTricity). On the day this news came out, I received about a dozen emails from friends who declared that I was not, indeed, crazy. Well, I wasn’t crazy for this particular reason, at least.

It turns out that this concept had been around for quite a while, completely unbeknownst to me. The researchers at MIT were able to wirelessly power a 60 watt light bulb from a distance of seven feet. This might not sound particularly impressive (and, indeed, most “proof of concept” experiments don’t have a great deal of immediate real world application) but I look forward to a future where electric cars may be recharged wirelessly, as they zip down the interstate at 70 mph.

Have you ever filled a balloon with air, and then let go of the balloon, watching it flying crazily around the room as the power of the compressed air provides energy for its journey?

There are currently at least four car companies that are working on cars that would be powered by compressed air. For the environmentally conscious people, the air car would have zero emissions (since it emits only air). Note that the environmentally impact could be greater than the car’s emissions, as other sources of energy would be required to compress the air.

The air cars would be cheaper to manufacture, because they could eliminate many costly components that are found in internal combustions engines.

At this point, the air cars are still in the early stages. There are currently concerns about the safety of the cars (since the manufacturers attempt to make them light to decrease the power requirements) and lackluster range.

Frenchman Yves jumped out of a plane on the French side of the English Channel and soared 22 miles across the channel on his jet-propelled wing at a speed of more than two miles per minute. The wing carries seven gallons of fuel (getting about 3 mpg) and weights in at a svelte 120 pounds when fully fueled (stop for a second and think about how much the fuel weighs).

Rossy dreams of one day making a consumer model of his device. When he does, I’ll be the first one in line. Assuming, of course, that I can afford one. We can all dream, right?

Wikipedia was used as a source for he WiTricity and air car sections. Popular Science (February 2009) was used as a source for the Superman section)

Crazy fantasy leagues

If you’re just here for the PDF of the league rules for the Alphabet Soup League, Download here

I enjoy oddball fantasy leagues. In my experience, they tend to draw a crowd that enjoys a bit more of a challenge, and I definitely enjoy a competition. Winning is great, but I live for the pure thrill of competition.

My favorite league is a league of my own creation – the Alphabet Soup League. The intent of the league was to create something that would be considerably more challenging than a typical league – and based on some comments last year, I think I succeeded. Some of the GMs were very anxious to get started this year. The league is very different than any other league I have every encountered.

I go into considerable detail about the ABC league in an earlier post so I won’t rehash all of it here. The gist is that you are only allowed to have one player represent each letter of the alphabet (A-Rod for R, for example). The draft is also very strange. You are allocated specific letters in each “round” and choose players from those letters. Within a given round, the picks are completely independent of each other, so there is no need to use any sort of draft order. People just email me their picks at the end of each round. The downside is that there isn’t a good way to upload the information for the fantasy provider. Is it unrealistic to hope for XML support?

The 2009 draft is just winding down (it takes about ten days to complete). As with last year, some very good players slipped quite a way down the board. For example, I had second choice of the S players after another GM picked Sizemore. Johan Santana and CC Sabathia were the obvious picks, but I went with Geovany Soto. Why? Because my letters for the next several rounds were lousy for catchers, and I was afraid of being stuck with someone like Jason Varitek. It is important to look ahead and figure out when you might be able to fill a specific position (particularly catcher and middle infielder).

I am making the rules for the ABC league publicly availably. Download it here. If you decided to create your own version of the ABC league, drop me an email at Kosmo@ObservingCasually.com. Feel free to let me know if you have questions or comments about the league format. Yes, I realize that the letters E, I, and N suck.

The other oddball league I am in is a bit more typical. It is a keeper league – we keep all of our players from year to year. I adopted a very aggressive strategy for the draft. I took a list of the top prospects. If they were draft-eligible in Yahoo, I put them at the top of this list. As a result, only a few of the players I draft were bona fide full time major leaguers that year. As a result, I got crushed in the league, finishing 20th out of 20 teams. As a result, I got top waiver priority for the next year – and used it to pick Evan Longoria.

The second year – last year – was much different. Many of the prospects had been promoted to the majors and the team blossomed. I finished with the best record in the league (although I lost in the playoffs). In September – a time when most of the league’s GM were ignoring the league, I was busy snagging prospects who were called up for cups of coffee with the big league club. Needless to say, I’m very excited to see how the team does is 2009.

Josef Fritzl of Austria was sentenced to life in a psychiatric prison. Fritzl is the man who kept his daughter imprisoned in a secret basement in his house for 24 years. He repeatedly raped her and fathered seven of her children. One child died after Fritzl refused to allow medical attention. He later threw the baby’s body into a furnace. Fritzl faced charges that included murder (murder by neglect for refusing to allow medical care for the infant), incest, rape, and enslavement.

Fritzl would be eligible for parole in 15 years. However, he is 73 years old, making it quite likely that he will die in prison.

I hope Fritzl’s daughter can see this is as final chapter of this story and somehow put the past behind her and have a happy and productive life. Of course, this is easier said than done.

Weird tangent: I saw the story of Fritzl pleading guilty to the murder charge when I was at a restaurant. I could see the TV screen and read the closed captioning, but couldn’t hear anything. The closed captioning and video were a bit out of sync. I saw an image of Don Imus getting out of a car, and saw closed captioning talking about incest and murder. Say what you will about Don Imus, but he has never (to my knowledge) been accused of incest or murder, so I wasn’t sure what the actual story was. Eventually, the closed captioning got to the Imus story – he has prostate cancer. Why, exactly, can’t the news shows just dump the teleprompter feed into the closed captioning system? You have a script for the show – use it!

On Thursday, the US House of Representative passed a bill that would tax recipients of the AIG bonuses at a rate of 90% The method of using language that was clearly intended to isolate one specific group of individuals, combined with the angry statements from some legislators, makes this bill walk the fine line between proper legislative activity and a bill of attainder (in essence, convicting someone of a crime and penalizing them without benefit of a trial.

Personally, I would like to see these bonuses looked at on a case-by-case basis. I’m really not sure why congress is in such a rush. They could spend a bit more time taking a deeper look at the issue, and if they still felt that this was an appropriate course of action, they could pass this legislation.

Game 5 of pool 2
Japan’s Hisashi Iwakuma and Toshiya Sugiuchi combined on a five hit shutout of Cuba. This knocks Cuba out of the WBC. The semifinalists are now set – US, Venezuela, Korea, and Japan. Evan Longoria will replace Kevin Youkilis on the US team because of an injury.

The biggest story of the day was almost an upset of #2 seed Memphis. Memphis was down to Cal State Northridge late in the second half, but Memphis was able to rally and win. A Memphis loss would have been tragic to my bracket, since I have them as my champion.

In the end, the lowest seed to win in day one of the tournament was #12 seed Western Kentucky, which knocked off #5 seed Illinois. The Hilltoppers led by 10+ points for much of the game, before allowing a rally that let the Illini pull to within two points. Western Kentucky was able to seal the deal, though, and will advance to a second round game against Gonzaga.

An interesting image of the day is Oklahoma star Blake Griffin getting flipped by Morgan State’s Ameer Ali. Ali was immediately ejected from the game. Griffin missed time earlier this year because of a concussion. Griffin scored 28 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in the game.

My alma mater, Iowa State, is tied for the lead with archrival Iowa after day one of the NCAA wresting tournament. Unfortunately, Iowa has more wrestlers still alive in the winner’s bracket (6 for Iowa, 5 for ISU) and they are generally higher seeded. Still, we do have some opportunities. David Zabriskie is the top seeded heavyweight, and Jake Varner is seeded #2 at 197. Nick Gallick, #6 seeded at 141, is the second highest seed still remaining at that weight, as four of the top five have lost.

Hopefully Iowa will suffer some losses, the Cyclones will nab some wins, and the ISU guys who lose are able to claw their way back in the consolation bracket. Let’s get a title for coach Cael Sanderson!

Come on Husker fans … have a sense of humor 🙂

The score you saw in the papers was New Mexico 83, Nebraska 71.

This was not, however, the actual score of the game. Some wealthy Nebraska alums quietly negotiated with the media (and the New Mexico coaches) and the media took the cash and reported a close score. All recordings of the event were destroyed.

In truth, Nebraska got absolutely smoked. If I told you the actual score, you’d tell me that it was physically impossible to lose by that many points. Much of the blame was placed on the shoulders of interim basketball coach Tom Osborne Jr. The mistakes in the game were countless, so we’ll break them down by category

Personnel issues
The Huskers were given repeated technical fouls for having too many players on the court. More often than not, Nebraska broke the huddle with eleven players.

The Huskers featured a center who was 6’8” and weighed 320 pounds. This is perhaps understandable, but the presence of two guards who tipped the scales at 300+ pounds was a bit unconventional. Coach Osborne explained: “Hey, you need big guys up front to protect the quarterback.” The result of this decision was a fast break that moved at a snail’s pace, as well as a complete inability to get back on defense.

Style of play too physical
The Huskers got in foul trouble early. This was due to what could be loosely described as moving picks. Coach Osborne was quite upset by these calls. “I could understand a few holding calls,” he sputtered “but since when are you not allow to block the opponent and push him downfield?”

Forgetting to dribble
The Huskers had a tendency to toss the basketball to their power forward and have him charge through the middle of the defense. Unfortunately, he forgot to dribble. Or, in the words of one upset Nebraska fan “you’re supposed to drop the ball on purpose? Why would you do that? That’s a fumble.”

Incomplete passes
The favorite play of the Huskers was a sixty foot toss down the court. Unfortunately, so of these passes were not caught on the fly, and the receivers would pick up the “incomplete pass” and toss it to the referee, thinking that the ball was dead.

Ignoring the basket
Nebraska seemed to be completely unaware of the basket for much of the game, instead preferring to move the ball out of bounds over the end line for a “touchdown”. This resulted in a few dozen turnovers during the course of the game.

On the rare occasion when the Huskers did pay attention to the basket, they attempted to make a field goal by kicking the ball from mid court. None of these attempts were successful.

This was an absolutely brutal game to watch. I would strongly suggest that Nebraska disband their basketball team to avoid a similar disgrace in the future.

It’s finally here – the day you have all been waiting for. The NCAA tournament begins today. While fans rejoice, corporate America groans under the weight of millions of hours of lost productivity. I don’t think any other single sporting event during the year generates as much buzz.

This weekend, we will experience wall-to-wall tournament coverage. CBS will whisk us from game to game, ensuring that we never get bored. We’ll even see multiple games via split screen. If we’re not sure about the availability of pizza, Pizza Hut will let us know that they, indeed, are open during the tournament and will be happy to deliver. If we forget, Pizza Hut will remind us, again and again again, all throughout the tournament.

Basketball fans love the tournament, of course, but non-fans also come out of the woodwork for the tournament. The casual fan can be exposed to a wide variety of offensive and defensive styles, and CBS makes sure that they are never subjected to a blowout. When one game gets out of reach, they just switch to a better matchup. Basically, we get to eat dessert, but don’t have to eat our veggies. That’s always OK in my book.

An ancient tradition in the history of the NCAA tournament is the filling out of brackets. I run a small office pool (for entertainment purposes, of course). This in my seventh year running the pool, and I get a lot of enjoyment from watching people participate. Every year, the people who know a lot about basketball attempt to compete against the people who spend thirty seconds filling out their bracket – and the non-fans do pretty well most years.

I have a great memory of the 2003 tournament. One of the managers in the office was ridiculing another person’s choice for national champion. I stayed neutral, with my standard comment of “you never know what will happen”. The manager’s prediction of gloom and doom looked on target when 14 seeded Manhattan cut a Syracuse lead to just five points with less than seven minutes to go. Syracuse prevailed in the game, however, and would go on to win the national title.

There are other stories of predictions gone terribly wrong. My wife’s friend used an interesting method to choose the winners one year. She picked them alphabetically. Yep – whichever team came first in the alphabet was picked as the winner. Unfortunately, Appalachian State was unable to reward her optimism, and she ended up with a pretty poor showing.

I’ve had the opportunity to attend several post-season basketball tournaments in person. I’ve never been to a men’s NCAA tournament due to geographical and financial considerations. However, I have been to at least four women’s NCAA tournaments, including one regional final. I have also been to a men’s NIT game (Iowa State vs. Iowa in 2003). The energy at the tournaments is awesome.

My advice to you is this. Watch a lot of basketball this weekend. Pull for some upsets. Become elated when you predict an upset and despondent when a Final Four team goes down to defeat. At least it will take your mind off the economy!

Bonus tournament: you might not realize it, but the NCAA wrestling tournament kicks off this weekend. It doesn’t have the fanfare of the basketball tournament (or even the fanfare of the women’s NCAA tournament, or the NIT tournament, etc) but I’ll be following the action closely all weekend, with the help of the internet. If I wasn’t from Iowa, I probably wouldn’t follow wrestling, but with two dominant teams in the state – my alma mater Iowa State, as well as that “other” school – it’s a sport that I have to follow.