It's The Most Wonderful Time ...

It is that time of year again. That time of the year when the chirping of athletic shoes becomes a roar. That time of the year when coach's sons from Little Podunk U become household names. When 19-year old kids throw a leather ball in the air hoping that it may indeed be "one shining moment."

The NCAA Basketball Tournament is upon us. Later today the selections will be announced and shouts will be made and tears will be shed. Starting this week, the greatest spectacle in college sports - yea, the greatest three weeks in all of sports - will be upon us.

It has been a tradition of mine for years to do a March Madness contest with those around me. When I was a teacher and a youth pastor, this often took the format of having the students fill in brackets and keeping track of those brackets by various scoring rules.

In the online world, last year I tried for the first year to get a little MM contest running, but I had a smaller readership and I started too late to get much action.

Last year's human winner was Andy Rupert of Isle Kerguellen. (Although I think that a coin flip brackett actually beat us all if I remember correctly.)

Anyway, if you would like to participate this year, you may do so by following this link - http://athinkingmansthoughts.mayhem.sportsline.com/e . If you already have a CBS Sportsline user id and password, use that and then it will ask your for the group password (which is "tourney"). If you do not already have a CBS Sporsline user id, you will need to create one to join. (I usually use my "junk mail" email account for anything like this that I sign up for online). After you are registered, it will ask you for the group password - enter "tourney."

This is (of course) a free game just for fun. The registration is also free. The scoring system is that the weight of each round increases per round and that a bonus of the seed to each winner is added to the weight to get a pick's score (thus a victory by a 12 seed in the second round is worth 14 - 2 for the round plus 12 points for the seed).

I would love to have you join us.

Just my thoughts,

Frank