The field of 64

March Madness will truly begin later today when the 64 teams are bracketed and everyone runs to fill out the bracket, or 3 or 4 or 5 or 10. For the novices, some pieces of advice.

First, a #12 seed has beaten a #5 seed every year, except 1, since 1989. The key is picking the right one. You might even want to pick 2 of the #12s to improve your chances, and a decent amount of the time that #12 gets into the sweet 16. Just look for a #5 that is not playing well coming into the tournament. A great example is Virginia. If they get a #5 seed I will take whatever #12 they are playing. They lost to Wake Forest to end the regular season and NC State in the ACC tournament. Their second leading scorer, JR Reynolds has been hurt and has shot 3 for 14, 3 for 15 and 3 for 15 the last 3 games.

Second, if you have been doing brackets for years and years you build up a "track record" with certain schools. Some schools are really good to you, and some break your heart year after year. I present two schools here that have cost me big time the last 15-20 years:

Syracuse and Arizona. I guarantee I'm not the only one in that boat. Without fail, these 2 schools fall flat on their face when they are a high seed, but when they are not picked to do much they get to the Final 4 or win the National Championship. In 1991 I had Syracuse in the Final 4. They made history by becoming the first #2 seed to lose to a #15. They didn't even win one game.

So have fun filling out your umpteen brackets and being able to tell all your friends and co-workers you picked the next George Mason this year. Yeah uhuh.

ESPN forgot how to cover Nascar

Well 3 Busch races in I think we see some trends from ESPN's Busch coverage.

Most of them are bad trends.

First off, the pit reporters they have are very good and all 4 know motorsports very well.

Rusty, Tim Brewer and Andy Petree have done well at explaining things during the race. Yes sometimes they really dumb it down and play to the "new nascar fan" that doesn't still understand tight and loose.

Ok enough of the good. Here comes the bad.

The hosts. Erik Kasilias on Nascar Now and Chris Fowler on the pre race show. Both are horrible. Both show a total lack of knowledge of the sport. Fowler's hosting during Speedweeks in Daytona was an embarassment to the network. It was obvious he knew nothing about the sport and had not done his homework.

Kasilias used to host a show on ESPN radio where he talked 99% of the time about ball and stick sports. He is a member of Mensa and went to the Univeristy of Michigan. He's a bright guy and very knowledgable but he can't host the show. He's too stiff.

Which leads me to an overall point for 3 races. Can we get some personality...please. I'm begging you. Someone tell a joke. I was fighting off sleep for most of the race in Mexico.

Ah yes the race in Mexico. Was this the Juan Pablo Montoya invitational? Were there other drivers in the field? ESPN you have to do a better job of covering the entire field, not just the top 3. There were at least 2 wrecks in the last 10 laps that we still have no idea what happened. Gilliland and Yeley wrecked but we got 1 very short replay that showed us nothing. Stephen Leicht went from 6th to 27th on the last lap. No idea what went on there if you only watched the TV coverage.

And thanks to a friend of mine for this one. Rusty...you don't have to set up every comment with "I tell you what". Just say it.

Many Nascar fans went gaga at the thought of the "good ole days" of ESPN coverage coming back this year. So far, this fan is very disappointed.