March Madness (Madness!)  

Welcome to the 323 version of March Madness (Madness!). Wait, why the double-madness? Well, because it's twice as mad as the traditional version. How do we do that? We add football, of course! At the 323 we believe that the only way you could possibly improve the NCAA Basketball Tournament, is if you added some football to the mix. So that's what we've done. Since not enough teams are good enough at both football AND basketball to make things interesting, we've slimmed the field to the toughest 16.

So what's our criteria? Well, first you have to have had success in both college basketball and college football for the most recent season. To us success means that your college football team made a bowl game, and your college basketball made the NCAA tournament (the NIT is for losers). All the teams that met those two criteria are then broken in the simplest way possible: we added up their losses. Why? Because all you can base teams on is the schedule that they play. As always, the 323 lesson is: DON'T LOSE!

So now that we have our teams, and our seeding, how the hell do we decide who wins head-to-head? First, we are dealing with last years football teams. So Chris Leak still plays for Florida, etc. It's too early to be projecting teams for next year. Second, we'll pick a winner in a basketball matchup, then a winner in the football matchup. If one team sweeps, obviously they win. If it's a blowout in one sport, and close in the other, than the team scoring the blowout is the winner. So if say, Arkansas played Duke, and Duke won a close basketball game, the Hogs blowout in the football matchup would carry the over-all matchup for Arkansas. If it's close in both football AND basketball, well, the football matchup carries more weight. It's a football blog people, get used to it. Finally, this couldn't be any more arbitrary, so what we say goes. However, feel free to contact us when you've seen the matchups and let us know who you think should win. We can be persuaded, and more participation should make it all the more fun. So here's the matchups for the first round, enjoy!

The East:

1: Ohio St. (#1 overall) vs.
8: Tennessee

2: Florida vs.
7: Boston College

3: Louisville vs.
6: USC

4: Notre Dame vs.
5: Maryland

The West:

1: Wisconsin vs.
8: Virginia Tech

2: Nevada vs.
7: Oregon

3: Texas A&M vs.
6: Texas

4: BYU vs.
5: UCLA

Send us your thoughts! Round 1 results unveiled tomorrow!