Keith Strudler

This is 100% bragging, but I am currently leading my NCAA Tournament office pool of 29 people. Not tied for first, but singularly ahead of the field after two rounds. And I have my entire final four and seven of my elite eight still alive, meaning I’ve got a huge range of points ahead of me. For reference, I’m in the 99th percentile on the ESPN Bracket contest. I’m not sure I’ve been the 99th percentile anything. So I’m pretty proud of myself.

There’s going to be a lot of disagreement about the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Like whether Drake is the best upset pick or if Florida can win it all – and the answer is yes. But here’s something pretty much everyone can agree with. We’re all against UNC, or North Carolina. Except Tarheel fans, of course. But the rest of the country, we definitely want them to lose.

Say this for Rich Rodriguez, the previous and now new head football coach at West Virginia. He did what American Government threatened to do but couldn’t.

I apologize in advance for both the indulgence and getting in the weeds. But last weekend, I went to Ithaca, New York, to watch the Indoor Heptagonal Track and Field Championships, which ran about five hours both Saturday and Sunday in Cornell’s Barton Hall.

Famously in The Legend of John Henry, man battled and defeated machine in a test of strength and efficiency in digging a railroad tunnel. Of course, that effort cost Henry his life, and, as we know, only served as a precursor for bigger and faster machines that would inevitably replace humans in excruciating manual labor. The analogy is indirect, but the tale is still relevant in a looming conversation about baseball and automated officiating. More specifically, whether humans or machines are better at calling balls and strikes.

It’s not uncommon if you dedicate significant parts of your life to working in or talking about sports and the world feels like it’s on fire, you start wonder if you’re efforts are a bit glib, like you’re picking a new kitchen backsplash when the house just fell down.

There’s a bunch of reasons I like college sports more than professional. Some of it is the imperfection of the craft, like they still make mistakes. Some of it the number of teams and underdogs.

It’s hard to get a headline right now, with the 24/7 news dump out of Washington and the Super Bowl coming up on Sunday. But the NBA managed to get some ink, not with anything happening on the court but instead something in HR.

There are some sports records you’d rather not own. Like longest losing streak. Or most times hit by a pitch. Here’s another. Most NFL playoff game starts by a quarterback without making it to the Super Bowl. That record is held by Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills, who last Sunday lost in his 13th playoff start to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship.

At some point, sports villains do eventually become fan favorites if they persevere long enough. Fans eventually grow to respect and even adore the person who once bore their ire if they rise above the partisanship of sports fandom to the ethereal place of sports legendry.