matt weighs in

This will be a first-day take on the third day (copyright: The Common Man on KFAN), but both the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball championship games played out as I expected. North Carolina men dominated Michigan State and the Connecticut women dominated Louisville. UConn would give the Gopher men’s team a run for its money, I think. It’s fine that MSU and Louisville made the championship games, but they weren’t the teams that could give the eventual champions a great game in the final. They beat the teams they played to get to the final game, so I guess they deserved it, but anyone predicting they would win it was probably more hoping they would win than actually thinking they could. It would have been much more fun to watch the Paris twins for the Oklahoma women go up against the UConn women.

I didn’t think Michigan State would get past USC in the 2nd round and thought Louisville would make it to the Final Four. I felt that either Pittsburgh or UConn (men) would have given UNC a better championship game, since they had strength and bulk at most positions to bang on the boards and really make UNC defend them hard. Michigan State was just too small and couldn’t stay with UNC’s explosiveness in both the full-court and half-court game. Which is too bad, because MSU playing in the championship game in their home state was a nice story. However, I didn’t think it was as important as some national writers made it out to be.

There were writers who actually wrote that MSU playing in the Final Four in Detroit would be a savior for the city and state, if only for a week. As though they could just tuck away the unemployment and awfulness of the city into a nice little box for eight days and hide it in a storage closet at Ford Field. Sure, it made people feel good that their team, or at least a team from their state, was doing well on the national stage, but unless they were a small business owner near the hotels, stadium or airport, welcoming thousands of new customers through their doors and raking in the much-needed cash, MSU making the championship game didn’t put more food on people’s tables, didn’t add long-term jobs, didn’t prop up the auto industry and didn’t keep people in their houses. And of course, now that the game is over, you have writers (maybe even the same writers discussed above) saying this, that the games were fun to watch if you live in Michigan, but life is pretty much the same – a bowl full of worries about what to expect next.

And on top of that, their team got absolutely destroyed, which I am happy about for two reasons: 1) I’m more of a front-runner, so seeing the better teams actually win brings me about as much pleasure as other people feel when an underdog wins (I am still absolutely befuddled how New England couldn’t score more points on the Giants in the 2008 Super Bowl), and 2) MSU’s loss made my taunts to the people in my bracket who chose them to win look a little less stupid. It was the first and only email blast I sent to the bracket group during the three weeks of the tourney, as MSU kept winning. I would have eaten some serious crow if they had won it all.

Overall, a fairly fun tournament to watch. I wasn’t saddened that no real underdogs made a run – that’s fun to watch every once in a while, but I really thought their were 8-10 good teams this year, and we got to see most of them in the Elite Eight and Final Four. How can anyone not like watching the best play each other when everything is on the line? Which is why I was really pulling for UNC to face both Pitt and UConn in the Final Four. Those games would have been Ali-Frazier and Ali-Foreman like (or Sugar Ray-Hagler like, if you prefer the smaller fighters). Alas, we were stuck watching UNC thoroughly destroy an overmatched MSU team in front of their home fans and state, therefore continuing the streak of bad news in Michigan for another week.

If you’re a college basketball fan and you haven’t heard of Gus Johnson, then you need to seriously rethink whether or not you are a college basketball fan. Hopefully by the end of this weekend, you will know who he is. Gus is an announcer for CBS (and others), who works the NCAA men’s basketball tournament every year. He has a smooth voice that can raise from mute to fighter jet loud within seconds of a monster dunk.

But his bread and butter comes when games get down to crunchtime – the final couple minutes of a close one, made all the better when there is something on the line, like moving on in the tournament, or when great players make great plays.

Instead of trying to continue to describe it, just watch the following:

Gus’s call is great, made all the better by Bill Raftery’s hoarse call on the replay of, “Major! Onions!” which is his signature call. I only posted the one video here, but search YouTube for others. He has also called some UFC bouts, I think. My guess is that he gets just as excited for anything exceptional that happens. It would be the same reaction if he received an extra chicken nugget in his six piece value meal: “CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? GIVE IT UP FOR CHICKEN LIIIIIIIIITTLLLLLE!”

Here’s to hoping Gus gets good games this weekend. He’ll be calling the games from Indianapolis on Friday at 6 and 8:30pm CST.

We have been knee-deep in March Madness here, with the NCAA men’s basketball tournament getting underway this past weekend. At the same time, we were preparing for Elliot’s 2nd birthday, which was on Saturday, March 21st. We recorded a new Podcast Named Pig on Sunday after all the festivities were over, and we had a chance to catch our breath. We had a great time with our friends and family at two different parties, and Elliot and Siena are absolutely exhausted from all the activity and excitement.

We kept the podcast fairly short – an interview with Siena to get her thoughts about basketball and tried to get Elliot to talk about one of his favorite gifts he received. There were some other things I wanted to get into, but in order to cut down on time, we didn’t discuss, so I am going to put them here, in my cozy little section of our website.

I wanted to talk about the basketball tournament but not only the games, which are great, but how I need to balance watching so many games over the course of four days with spending time with the family, especially leading up to one of my child’s birthday parties, when there is so much preparation needed to be done. You would have to ask Laura and the kids if I succeeded in keeping this balance, but I know that even when I was helping with the party, my mind wasn’t always fully in the moment, as I found myself wondering if I was missing anything exciting.

I was up early on both Thursday and Friday morning so I could go to work. I was out the door before anyone else in the house was stirring, which is hard to do with our old wood floors. Normally, I leave when the kids are eating breakfast or have just sat down to watch their first cartoon on PBS Kids.

I worked both days and then raced home to catch the last few games of the afternoon session and help with party stuff. I was up until about midnight both nights. Saturday is kind of a blur right now, as we had another birthday party in the morning, before putting the finishing touches on Elliot’s party while the kids napped. We were both beat on Saturday night, but I kept one eye on the tv as I tried not to fall asleep and miss a great game.

The whole time on Thursday and Friday, I was totally conscious of trying to balance being a parent and meet those obligations while watching the games. I sat down for our family dinners, but I have to admit that I made it quicker than usual. I played with the kids, but mostly in the basement where the tv is. Laura was busy making cake and cupcakes, so Siena and Elliot wanted to be by her side, and I wasn’t always good at keeping their attention, as my attention was intently on the games. We played basketball with our little hoop, dribbling a basketball, while watching basketball. I guess one good thing is that I was trying to teach them about something I love, but because they don’t share my love (yet), it probably appeared I was doing it half-hearted. I can’t disagree and neither would Laura, I bet.

Probably the worst was when I grumbled, albeit briefly, about having to go to the store at about 9:30pm for more frosting. This makes no sense, but I was more mad at having to change pants and put shoes on than actually having to go, but I’m glad I didn’t fight it, because it definitely would have been unfair to Laura. I’m happy with how Elliot’s parties turned out and how I helped, but Laura deserves a huge trophy. I am promising her that her March madness ended this weekend.

Laura and I are fully committed to this podcast stuff. It should be on iTunes soon, too, so you can download all episodes and listen in the car as you take your cross-country road trip this spring break or summer.

We enjoy doing it (right, hon?), even if we sound like a couple of college freshmen working the 2-3am shift at their college radio station playing the requisite playlist of Dylan, Zeppelin, The Cranberries and The Beastie Boys, only with worse sound equipment.

The sound quality is really bugging me, and I know that spending money on a microphone, an amp or mixer and some different software can fix it, but I want it to be easier than that. I guess this is what I need to reconcile – how much time and money are we willing to put into this endeavor. That, and practicing my Paul Harvey voice (RIP, Paul…good day!).

I know we’ll definitely put in the time: brainstorming topics, production meetings on the flow, recording, converting to correct format and uploading the finished product. But I think we’ll hold off on a big expenditure and see how it goes with the current setup, play around with recording in different areas of the house and call on our more fanatic audiophile friends in the meantime to put out a more listener-friendly podcast product.

Which is why I called my friend Dave on Thursday night to get some tips on how to make Laura and my voice the same volume, how to make the quality better with what we have and, since he’s the king of audio deals, whether he could do some research on microphones, if we decide to go down that road. I knew he had to be my first call, because he’s the only person I know who’s had a “Letter to the Editor” printed in a magazine.

Within minutes he had my head spinning in audio speak: You need to normalize the sound. What’s your sampling rate? You’re bit rate should be at least 8 (or is it 44.1 mhz?). Does your computer recognize your video camera as an audio source?

Ummmm….(crickets chirping)

Actually, he was quite helpful. I was able to make a couple changes to the audio input settings for our built-in iSight microphone and will definitely check to see if the video camera is recognized as an audio source. I’m also planning a trip to Orchestra Hall to steal some soundproofing panels off the walls for our basement. We’ll see how all this affects the next Podcast Named Pig. And thanks to Dave for getting us there.

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I’d be remiss if I didn’t write briefly about March Madness. Many of the smaller conferences have already wrapped up their tourneys, so they know which teams will be sacrificed in the 1st two rounds of the Big Dance. On Thursday, the bigger conferences kicked it off with many potential 1 and 2 seeds getting beat: Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Kansas, Oklahoma. Damn our decision to forgo cable and satellite (I’m actually ok with it, but that’s for another day). Those would have been fun games to watch, especially the nearly four hour epic between Connecticut and Syracuse.

As I wrote last year, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Can’t wait to watch conference championships this weekend and see what region the Minnesota Gophers fall – my guess is they’ll be a 9-12 seed. And I hope North Dakota State ends up in the same region and they somehow meet in the Sweet 16. Sky-U-Mah!

Okay, I’m back at it. You can stop holding your breath in anticipation now. I hope you have noticed some additions in the sidebar of the main page – Twitter (or tweets), which we love and force ourselves not to update every hour and our Flickr pictures, which we have to do better to update more often. We can even send our tweets by text message, which we did Friday night from Chino Latino in Uptown. You’ve been warned. I’m working on a few other things that may or may not screw up the sight if I mess them up, but I’ll try to keep that to a minimum, or at least contact my friend Dave, who’s recently been experiencing some updating pains. That’s the joy of the interweb.

A few thoughts on a Sunday night to catch up:

1. We could get some closure to the Democratic race on Tuesday. Most polls show Hillary with only a slight edge in Pennsylvania (down from earlier in the month), but nowhere near significant enough to make up much ground in delegates. I didn’t see the most recent debate last week, but most accounts were fairly disgusted with ABC’s lines of questioning. Two different recaps are here and here. I have thoughts on what Obama said at the private fundraiser in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, but he looks to have weathered the ridiculous reactions to it (hint as to how I feel about those reactions).

2. The NCAA basketball tournament was exciting as advertised. I have to admit that I fully jumped on the Davidson bandwagon after they disposed of Georgetown, who, most unfortunately, was my pick to win the whole damn thing. I had G’town in my pool with Laura’s family, who mostly live on the West Coast and had a predictably strong UCLA bias. Congrats to those in Missouri who were biased to Kansas, and, therefore, came out on top in the pool.

3. The NBA playoffs have started, and they are living up to their billing, as expected. I watched about 52 of the 58 minutes in Game 1 between San Antonio and Phoenix. The Suns were ahead most of the game and should have won, but were in foul trouble when it mattered – I’m not a big fan of refs and usually tell whoever will listen that I know I could do better in stripes.

The game was almost unwatchable for two reasons: every ref call was followed by players whining about it (this grows tiresome) and THE PA ANNOUNCER AND THE MUSIC WERE SO LOUD THROUGHOUT THE GAME THAT I ALMOST TURNED DOWN THE SOUND ON THE TV (bet you want to stop reading after I just screamed at you for five seconds). They do this at MN Timberwolves games, too. Music plays while the game is going on, and the game announcer thinks it’s his job to get the crowd going. The game should be exciting enough to keep the fans in it. This was evident during last year’s playoff games between Golden State and Dallas. GS’s crowd was so amped that they drowned out the music. I can’t imagine the next time that might happen at Target Center.

4. Elliot is walking. I can’t tell you the non-stop joy this is to watch him keep his balance on grass, dirt and sand. It’s great comedy, and I may start taking bets with people as to whether or not he can stay on his feet for more than five seconds on different terrain. I would take the over every time.

5. I miss Johan.

6. I watched three of the six MN Wild games and listened to two others on the radio. They only led for about four minutes in the six games played (about 380 minutes total), but with my limited hockey knowledge, they controlled play for most of the series. They ran into a Colorado Avalanche team whose goalie won the series for them (you can’t overlook their overall defense, though). I think the Wild were done in by a team that played their game better than they did in the series. The Wild are coached to be defensive minded first and take advantage of opportunities to score when the opponents give it to them. This series they lost, they were the aggressive team the majority of the time, and Colorado scored when they had the chance. Only one goalie was MVP in this series.

Siena thinks I’m crazy, but I woke up Thursday morning singing, “It’s the most wonderful tiiiiiiime of the yearrrrrr…” It continued on for a few refrains of basketball related lyrics, March Madness happiness and a beer drinking chorus. I’m not sure anyone here has gotten used to me singing my own lyrics to other well-known songs. Oh well. It’s my gift that keeps on giving.

Thursday also brought with it phase two of our first attempt at home brewing. I picked up my bro-in-law after work and we headed to the western suburbs to transfer our brew (after fermenting for almost two weeks) to its new home in a five-gallon glass carboy where it’ll sit for another week or so (secondary fermentation). Although it was only about 10-15 minutes of total work (which I mostly spent watching my brew-master friend take care of), we turned it into about four hours of grilling, beer drinking, March Madness watching, Guitar Hero playing fun.

Use your own imagination to turn these activities into lyrics to the previously mentioned holiday classic.