News-Record.com

Man, do I miss D.C. No, not the history, not the sights, not the culture. I mean, the spacious, Bond-movie like cavern they had for a press room there. There was a phone for every paper and a chicken in every pot. Or something like that.

Charlotte? Not so much. If you hold your laptop screen at just the right angle, two people can work directly across the table from each other. Phone lines are a very, very precious commodity. Guys are shooting me dirty looks already and I just got online five - ok, 15 - minutes ago.

Over under on the number of shouting matches that break out on deadline is 5.5 for the weekend. Two to one odds that somebody gets threatened with bodily harm. I'm telling you, nothing smells worse than the scent of desperation in a media room as deadline approaches.

Speaking of desparation ...

I did all my pool picks - strictly for recreational purposes of course - in about five minutes flat this morning. Every year I plan on doing in-depth research. Every year I slap them together at the last minute.

Two of my brackets are in a pool that rewards upsets. So I went wild on that one. The other two are in a pool that rewards overall accuracy. So I actually used the index approach on one of those - picking it all according to seeding until the Final Four, where I have Illinois and UNC winning and then Illinois winning it all. And no, I won't apologize if I win.

How am I doing so far? I picked UW-Milwaukee on 3 of 4 brackets, including both upset pool brackets. But I got burned by Pitt on 3 of 4 brackets. And Niagara fell through on one of my upset brackets. So not, great but not bad.

Don't worry, I'll keep you all updated. Because I know you care. But it might be tricky getting on-line often enough.

Gotta go, the angry mob is threatening to torch my computer if I don't disconnect from the phone line.