Not that I have anything to brag about in this regard, but I thought I check in on the bracket of everyone's favorite college basketball coaching expert, Bill Simmons.  As many of you know, Bill had a good time earlier this week filling out his bracket and picking St. Mary's to upset Texas in the second round.  [Missed it by that much, buddy.]

Regardless, here were Bill's Elite 8 picks: UNC, Tennessee, Clemson, USC, Pitt, Stanford, UCLA, Duke.

If you're counting, that's 4 out of 8 already eliminated in the first weekend, with 3 barely squeaking by (Tennesee over Butler in OT; Stanford over Marquette in OT; and UCLA just an A&M collapse away from oblivion), with the last of the 8 yet to play (UNC).  As for the Final 4?  He had USC and Pitt, along with Tennessee and UCLA.  Awesome.

So um, look, I'm not one who thinks basketball knowledge should be judged on how well you do your brackets.  To a certain extent, predicting the first few rounds takes a lot of luck.  But you can't blame a guy for a little schadenfreude, can you?

So how are you doing with your brackets so far?  Better than Simmons?  If you're one of those people that loves to talk about who's ruining your bracket, but is a little wary of annoying everyone on BON by talking about something that no one else cares about (and trust me, no one does), well, here's your chance to let it flow.  Feel free to complain about your fantasy baseball draft from last week too.  I sucked mine up.  Jose Lopez?  What the hell was I thinking?  Oh, and if you want to mix in some extremely dated pop culture references to fit the subject matter, by all means....

--BZ--