It Begins...

I recently started reading Committed, a book by Mark St. Amant, in which the author essentially quits his job and uses the next 8 months of his life to immerse himself in the world of fantasy football, while trying to win the league title that has evaded him for so many years. As I desperately need something to do with my life right now, I'm using this book about pursuing a fantasy football title as my inspiration to enter upon an 8 week journey to obsess over the 2008 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament with the hopes of winning at LEAST one of the Tournament Pools that I will be entering. My intent is to document this experience in blog form, as I more intently follow college basketball through: the waning regular season, the always entertaining conference tournaments, selection sunday, and the NCAA Tournament itself. I've only put an hour of thought into this idea, but it seems stupid, engaging, and entertaining enough to sustain my enthusiasm beyond tonight.

Sitting down with a yellow legal pad in front of me, I joted down some of my intentions, hopes, and dreams with regard to this project which I'm naming - Conquering The 2008 NCAA Tournament:

• Blog about the entire experience, duh
• Keep a running diary of the first two days of the tournament (this is what I'm most excited about, and if I do nothing else with this project, I'm definitely doing this. the first two days of the NCAA Tournament are the best two sports days of the year, hands down)
• Follow every, and I mean EVERY, conference tournament
• Research the HELL out of the top 30-35 teams
• Obsess over the conference tournaments so much, that you con Phil into filling out conference tournament brackets with you
• Enter at LEAST 4 NCAA Tournament Pools (For pride, money, or both...but at least 4)
• Download podcasts that follow college basketeball
• Watch as much as whatever ESPN has to offer about college basketball
• Get stories, insights, and opinions about March Madness and NCAA Tournament pools from 5-10 friends
• Look into my own personal history with regard to the tourney - either with pools or personal attendance
• Try to gain insight as to why this thing is so huge on a national level
• Search online and in magazines for any interesting and/or relevant articles relating to this phenomenon
• Use humor whenever possible, make fun of players, coaches, broadcasters, analysists, etc.

So that's my idea de jour. I'm really liking it as of this moment, as I already immerse myself in the NCAA tournament to a ridiculous amount each march. The interest is already there, I'm just choosing to dive into the things that surround college basketball and the tournament even further. I don't have a great (or even good or average) track record with keeping up on things like blogs, let alone committing to many things in general, so we'll be taking this one day at a time. The only way I'll be able to do this well at all is to not worry about the writing in my posts. Normally, I'd worry and edit ad nauseum, trying to use the perfect words while trying to construct the perfect sentence. That's all horseshit. In order to do this project any justice, I'm going to pump out posts and not give a rip how poorly they are composed. I'll run a spellcheck here and there, but this project is going to be way more about process and quantity, opposed to content and quality. (Bob - please feel free to point out editing issues here and there) So please bear with me, all 6 of you, and we'll see what comes out of this.

Selection Sunday is a mere 25 days away.