Aside from Super Bowl Sunday, this is my favorite time of the year. Nothing is better than this coming Thursday through Sunday. What’s even better is when your brackets are still alive for the second weekend of play.

On a personal note, I couldn’t be any happier with the seeding of the Hurricanes. I wanted a 7 or 10 seed more than anything, which I got, in arguably the worst of the four regions.

At first glance, the match ups seems pretty fair. I haven’t paid too much attention to them yet, but I think I’m going to keep it conservative with a UCLA-Kansas finals. I foresee UNC also making it to the Final Four, and Memphis being the only 1 seed to not make it, possibly being upset by Pitt. But what do I know about this stuff? (nothing).

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From SbB, I have learned that NCAA Women’s hoops is losing a lot of money.

The US Department of Education reported that the NCAA’s 333 Division I women’s basketball programs that competed in the 2005-2006 season lost a cumulative amount of ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-NINE MMMILLION DOLLARS!

This may not mean all that much to you, but if you realized where this money was coming from, you would likely be a bit irked. A few years ago, I was looking at a list of revenues from college sports programs (mainly focusing at the University of Miami, where I was an undergraduate student at the time), and the NCAA rules of disbursing money relatively evenly among different athletic programs is astonishing. Although the football team literally earned 1,000 times the revenue of a program like women’s basketball, the girls still received a ton of cheddar, which was essentially money pissed away, except for the girls on scholarship and anyone else who happens to profit from the program. I would say that I’m a general fan of capitalism, so it makes no sense to me that the programs who earn all the money can’t spend a greater majority of that money. I don’t think you can leave the less cared about programs out of it, but a mere trickle down is plenty for them.

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I am absolutely convinced Pat Riley has thrown in the towel. Thursday night, the key were getting smoked by the Lakers for pretty much the entire game, but then we cut the lead to six points with about five minutes left, and what does Riley do? Of course, pull out Wade and Marion! Duh! Last night, the Heat were KILLING Sacrament for the first two and a half quarters, by up to 20 points, and what happens? We not only blow the game, but WE end up getting smoked. Last month, I said bad has gotten worse, but how bad can this get? I guess at this point, we’re playing for the number 1 pick in the draft.

Thankfully, all hope is not lost in South Florida. Hurricanes’ basketball got a much needed victory against ACC rival Virginia on Saturday. What made me especially optimistic about this game was that it was a close game, something we will surely see many of in the upcoming ACC Championship and Tourny. Let’s just hope we can keep it up.

Unfortunately, you can’t get good coverage of college baseball ANYWHERE. But Hurricanes’ baseball is kicking ass (depending on where you look, anywhere from number 2 to number 15 in the country). We started the season with three straight wins against Cincinnati, and won the first two against the Gators this weekend, before falling to them on Sunday. 5-1 record = my likey!

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I can’t handle this torture. I want to go in a self-induced coma and wake up for ‘09 football season, mostly to see these new ‘Canes boys on the field, and slightly to see how the ‘Phins are progressing, but that will take a bit longer, I believe (’10 maybe?).

Hurricanes basketball blew what would’ve been a great comeback last night at Clemson. There’s only a few more games left until the ACC tournament. Pray that they give us something to cheer for throughout March…

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The Dolphins: So, I didn’t really cover the Zach Thomas trade. I’m not sure why we traded so many guys without trying to get any value from them, but we’re going to have some serious cap room coming up. As of right now, we don’t know what sort of results Bill Parcells will have in Miami, but you have to applaud his decision to take the bull by the horns and do what needed to be done to this team, essentially, to create a new one.

The Heat: Ugh. The other night against Houston, the commentator said it best when he said "Dwyane Wade is like Michael Jackson with a bunch of Tito Jackson’s running around out there."

Hurricane Basketball: The huge win against Duke last Wednesday was by far the most exciting college basketball I attended. After that win, then whooping up on Maryland on Saturday, we should make it to the tourny. I’d like to see us win a couple games in the ACC tournament, and preferably get top four seed in the ACC so we get a first round bye, but a good showing in the ACC tourny will get us a good seed in the big tourny.

Hurricane Baseball: Most people don’t even realize that baseball season started. The Hurricanes are number 2 in the country and just swept Cincy to start the season. We have the Gaytors coming up this weekend. See ya in Omaha!

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The ‘Canes schedule has been released, here.

Weird to me is seeing Dolphins Stadium on the official schedule. I’m not getting used to seeing that anytime soon.

As far as the schedule goes, three Thursday night games is nice (especially judging by our typical success on Thursday nights). It’s great that football will be played in August again. We have two really tough games in the first four weeks against UF and an avenging Texas A&M.

I really don’t think this upcoming season is going to be our next National Championship. For one thing, it’s an even year. And another, we have to give these recruits one more year to truly dominate on the field. I think an ACC Championship could certainly be in our future, especially considering the conference is terribly weak right now. I’m getting excited and we still have over six months to go.

‘09 Champs.

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Hey guys. Remember when the ‘Canes got blown out of the last game at the Orange Bowl, and we heard tales from the sidelines on players smiling, indifferent about the situation? Remember when we heard recruits were disappointed at seeing this? Remember when all of you were being drama queens, saying this was devastating for our recruiting? Remember when I said it wouldn’t matter?

Well, I was right.

In two years, Randy Shannon has had the number 4 and number 1 recruiting classes in the country. I have never been one to follow recruiting that closely, but one thing I know is that when you are perenially around the top in the country, your team is going to be a perenial Top 5 team.

# 1 DT, top three OLBs (TOP THREE!?!?), are you kidding me? There goes the running game and dreaded tight end by any team we play.

‘09 Champs. Remember that I said that.

And if the ACC can continue to suck for a few more years, we can breeze right through and have many more.

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