The Blog of David Burns

There’s no doubt in my mind that the Big East was the best conference in college basketball this season. With that said, there should never be an instance where one conference has 3 number one seeds. While it’s a problem bigger than just this tournament, the Big East needs to be cut in half. 16 teams is ridiculous and largely trivializes conference performance if winning the whole thing only guarantees something as silly as a rather predictable “automatic bid”; and that’s just the conference tournament at the end of the season.

I think Memphis does have something to complain about, considering they’ve done everything asked of them only to earn a 2 seed. To that point, beating up on garbage teams from Conference USA all season long did not reward Memphis, which was a good thing.

With that said, one of the most mind boggling aspects of this year’s tournament was the number of teams from each power conference that got in. With only 4 at large bids to non-power conference schools, a lack luster conference, such as the Pacific 10, only had one less bid than the Big East, the Big 12, and the Big Ten. A real shame if you ask me.

The Pac-10, similar to the SEC, stole two of those at-large bids thanks to teams winning conference tournaments that wouldn’t have made it to the Big Dance otherwise (USC and Mississippi State).

With that said, one of the oddest results of the selection process was the Pacific 10 Conference’s seeding. The Pac-10, on one hand, got six teams into the tournament (Washington, UCLA, Arizona State, California, USC, and Arizona), however, the committee showed little confidence in the Pac-10′s play at all. Each team seems to be incredibly low or faced with an exceptionally difficult task ahead.

Washington, who finished as the conference champions, came out best at a 4 seed. After that, ASU and UCLA both sit as 6 seeds (UCLA with the unfortunate task of perhaps playing Villanova at Villanova’s home arena should UCLA make it to the round of 32).

At first glance, I was very unhappy with the seeding of UCLA and the rest of the Pac-10. Rather low seeding for a set of teams from a power conference, if you ask me. Further examination of RPIs, however, showed that the committee was more right than wrong. This begs the question though, what point are the polls which have UCLA almost 10 spots higher than their 6th seed ranking?

Even more importantly, I felt that UCLA was finally not rewarded for legacy or for the brand of UCLA. With that in mind, I can’t understand at all what Arizona is doing in this tournament. I can’t help but feel that they, on the other hand, are riding their recent legacy to skate into the tournament this year.

Anyways, these are just my initial impressions. Thursday morning, I’ll reveal my bracket and I encourage you to show yours off as well. Until then.

In many ways, UCLA basketball in recent years has a number of parallels with the collapsing global economy. The mid 2000s showed promise of a new day with limitless potential. 2007 came with a slow down (a final four instead of a national championship game birth) and the late-2008 collapse of this year’s Bruin team (Michigan, Texas) illustrated how dim this season could be.

Yes, it’s an over-dramatization of UCLA basketball and a sad commentary of how ridiculously high our expectations are for championships at UCLA. Regardless, we’re not going to do so hot in the tournament this year so on Sunday evening, I’m going to release my list of predictions and analysis of the year in college basketball. Stay tuned.

If you haven’t seen all of this, you really need to catch up. It’s not just hillarious, but much like Jon Stewart’s confrontation with Tucker Carlson on CNN’s Crossfire, Stewart is finally asking the questions that need to be asked about modern TV journalism.

March 4th

March 9th

March 10

March 12 Extended Interview

It’s amazing that it’s March 2nd (Happy Birthday Mitch, btw) and we get our first really, really good snow of the season.

Spring will be here in a matter of weeks and here today we get a freezing cold day with a good six inches of snow.

Wonderful.

It was bound to happen with the jump to High Definition, but tomorrow evening will mark the first episode of The Simpsons, now in HD. While I haven’t watched the show for years now (it breaks my heart too much to see how they’ve ruined my childhood with pretty much each and every episode, not to mention feature film, since season 11 or so), it’s still neat to see the new opening. It’s very similar to the movie’s opening, but more like a renewal of the old classic. I’m kinda a fan.

It’s an informal goal I have to see all the best picture nominees before the Oscars each and every year and as of last night, I have seen three of the five. The ones I’ve seen thus far are Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, and Frost/Nixon. Hoping to see the remaining two, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Reader over the next couple weeks.

I can’t claim a favorite of the three, but I will say that while all of them have been enjoyable and great films, I still have a hard time with any of them being “the best picture of the year”. It’s hard to explain at the moment, and I think I want to see the remaining two nominees before I pass judgement, but that’s what’s been on my mind for the last few weeks.

Proud to say that my Super Bowl party was pretty much a success. Everyone had a great time and thankfully, the game came through in the end too. I’m happy to see the Steelers win but most importantly, the game ended close and competitive.

Like many Americans, I kept one eye on the game and one eye on the commercials and before I head to bed this evening (er, early, early morning), I wanted to just point out my three favorites in an otherwise terrible, terrible crop of commercials. Just in general, commercials have been getting worse and worse each year. Here are five that thankfully didn’t suck.

5. Coke Zero: Mean Troy

Cute twist on an old classic. Good work, boys.

4. Hulu: Alec and Huluwood

Hulu finally advertises (probably the best service on the web no one knows about, aside from maybe Mint.com) and they get the always awesome Alec Baldwin to do the job. A little weird at the end, but otherwise very funny.

3. Doritos: Crystal Ball

Ball in groin. Good surprise with the crystal ball. Textbook play all the way, Doritos, but an A all the way.

2. Cash4Gold.com: Heeere’s Money

At first I thought this was a parody, but kudos to the folks at cash4gold.com for coming up with a tackier commercial than your usual ones. Excellent job!

1. CareerBuilder.com: Tips

Repetitive. Bizarre. Koala hit in the face. Repetitive. Hilarious. Repetitive. Best of the night.

There are a few honorable mentions which I may include later, but I invite you to post your favorites in the mean time.

Folks who saw my Facebook status this morning knew how big of a fan I was of the fact that we were on a “Federal Government Unscheduled Leave” day which means that if you can’t make it into work, you can take the day off. We had snow yesterday and then freezing rain last night which created some icy surfaces this morning.

I was a little slow at coming in, waiting for the ice to melt on my sidewalk, but nonetheless, I admit, it is a little silly how DC takes time off for the lightest inclement weather possible.

President Obama this morning addressed just this fact:

It has been a pretty incredible two years with Barack Obama running and eventually winning, but on Tuesday evening, it became real.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama dance to "At Last" performed by Beyonce

Tuesday evening, I had the pleasure of going to the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball which was televised on ABC. It was the first ball that Barack and Michelle danced at and frankly, was an absolutely amazing evening. Many thanks to Lauren, Morgan, and Michael for the ticket hook up and of course thinking of inviting me. I had a spectacular evening that I’ll never foget.

I’ll have a lot more to write about the inauguration soon, but I just wanted to finally get this picture up for the world to see.

It has been an extremely busy week; between the 77th Winter Meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and then the 56th Inauguration of the President of the United States. Lots of great stories to tell and hopefully a few pictures to upload.

It’s been almost a month since I broke my toe and today is the first day that I’m wearing real shoes again on both feet (and just in time with it being 11 degrees outside in Washington.

Still a little pain, so I’m still wrapping it up, but at least I’ll have a little more comfort in my life.

It’s good to be back.