Thursday begins Easter weekend at the famed Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.  The azaleas will be in bloom as thousands of patrons will be on hand to watch the 2023 Masters golf tournament.

Prepare yourself for an unfolding drama as golfers from the PGA Tour tee-it up against 18 players from the rival LIV Golf tour.

The Masters traditionally invites all former champions to participate in this limited field golf tournament as long as those golfers are healthy enough to tee it up.

This week, former champions Sandy Lyle (1988) and Larry Mize (1987) have announced that this will be their final time to play in the field.

For those of us old enough to remember, Larry Mize’ win in 1987 came on the second hole of a playoff with Australia’s Greg Norman.  With Norman already on the putting surface of the par-4 11th hole, Larry Mize was faced with a difficult 140-foot chip shot across the 11th green.  The odds were against Mize being able to get up and down in two shots from there.

The famed Masters green jacket was moments away from being placed onto Greg Norman.

In one of The Masters’ most iconic moments, Larry Mize chipped the golf ball onto the 11th green and watched as it rolled across the green and into the cup for an improbable birdie.

The deflated Greg Norman missed his putt to tie Larry Mize.

Norman had just finished in second place for the second consecutive year.

Nine years later, Greg Norman teed-off in the 1996 Masters final round with a six shot lead.  Still trying to win his first green jacket, Norman faltered on the back nine and shot a final round 78.  He finished in second place for the third time as Nick Faldo won the title.

It was tough to watch the long-time World #1 golfer self-destruct during the final round in 1996.  One sportswriter accurately penned the sentiments of many golf fans by saying, “It was like watching a man drown”.

Can you imagine how badly it must have felt for Greg Norman?

For the second time, Greg Norman had been involved in a memorable loss at The Masters.  After the round, Faldo gave his Aussie friend a hug and said, “I don’t know what to say to you.  I just want to give you a hug”.

After that loss, Greg Norman’s professional golf career started a long downhill slide.  Though he finished his PGA Tour career as a Hall-of-Famer with 20 wins and two major championships (The Open in 1986 and 1993), Norman would not win another major after his collapse in Augusta in 1996.

Greg Norman became the most famous runner-up in the history of The Masters.

Though he never donned a Masters’ green jacket during his successful golf career, Greg Norman never had any trouble getting back into the grounds of Augusta National Golf Club.

Until this year, that is.

Greg Norman is now the CEO of golf’s team of bad guys.  We know them as the LIV Golf tour.

Norman is the man credited with luring former Masters champions such as three-time winner Phil Mickelson, two-time winner Bubba Watson plus Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, and Charl Schwartzel to LIV Golf.

In addition to that group of golfers, the LIV Golf team is represented by other professionals who have won a major championship during the past five years.  Cam Smith, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka will play in Augusta this week based on that criterion.

In all, the LIV Golf tour features 18 golfers in The Masters field of 88 players this weekend.

Sunday’s final score was LSU 102, Iowa 85.

That now makes four times that Louisiana native and women’s college basketball coach Kim Mulkey has led her team to a national title.  Mulkey is now a perfect 4-0 when coaching her team in national championship games.

She also won two more national titles during her years as a point guard for Louisiana Tech.  The fiery 5’4” Mulkey has been part of six college national championship teams as either a player or head coach.

If you go back to her high school days in Hammond, Louisiana, you can tack on four more state championships, too!  Did I say that she was valedictorian of her high school graduating class?  Of course!

Prior to Sunday’s incredible win by LSU, Coach Kim Mulkey had previously led Baylor to national titles in 2005, 2012, and 2019 during 21 years at the Waco, Texas school.

In the year Kim Mulkey arrived in Baton Rouge to take the reins of the women’s program two years ago, the LSU Lady Tigers had won just nine games that season.

After just two years, Coach Kim Mulkey’s LSU team has won 60 games and lost only eight.  This season’s national championship team finished the year with a gaudy 34-2 record.

LSU’s only two losses came in games at defending national champion South Carolina and at the SEC Tournament against Tennessee.  In the SEC tourney loss to the Vols, LSU blew a 14-point halftime lead and lost the game by two points.

It was a lesson they would not forget.

LSU won its first four games in the NCAA March Madness tournament to reach the Final Four.  The national media said that LSU had just a 5% chance to win two games and a national title.

Coach Kim Mulkey likely made sure that her LSU locker room was well aware that the media didn’t believe in them.

In Friday’s national semifinal, the Lady Tigers took out #1 seed Virginia Tech 79-72.  In the other semifinal, #2 seed Iowa surprised formerly unbeaten South Carolina 77-73.

Once LSU and Iowa advanced to the championship game, the television and media talking heads said that Iowa should be a prohibitive favorite in Sunday’s title game.  If Iowa could take down #1 South Carolina and end their two year winning streak, then LSU should be a breeze.  After all, Carolina blew-out the Lady Tigers 88-64 in Columbia back in February.

The media apparently forgot one very important thing.  LSU had Kim Mulkey as their coach, and Iowa did not.

Coach Mulkey wasn’t pleased by the lack of point production from LSU’s bench players in the national semifinal game against Virginia Tech.  She challenged her second unit to hit more outside shots as Iowa would likely allow LSU plenty of room to take them.

During Iowa’s semifinal upset of South Carolina, the Hawkeyes decided to play a tight zone defense against the taller Gamecocks.  In fact, Iowa packed the lane using four large players and dared South Carolina’s guards to take and make wide open outside shots.

The strategy worked.

Despite being outrebounded 49-25 by the taller Gamecocks on Friday night, Iowa’s zone defense completely took Carolina out of its normal scheme.  Guards who normally lofted passes to the big players on the inside couldn’t get the ball to them.  The Gamecock guards reluctantly took those wide open shots and missed most of them.

South Carolina converted went just 4-20 from beyond the three-point line in a six-point loss.

After Iowa’s zone defense maneuver took down #1 overall seed South Carolina, there was no reason to think the Hawkeyes would not employ the same strategy against LSU on Sunday.  After all, the Lady Tigers’ outside shooting percentage had been a weakness all season, too.

Oddly, some of the players on the LSU women’s team felt like Iowa had “disrespected” South Carolina on Friday night with their zone de...

How did three of this year’s men’s basketball Final Four participants make it onto the biggest stage for the first time in program history?

One theory is that the NCAA tournament committee simply goofed this year.

I just finished reading a book by ESPN college basketball bracketology guru Joe Lunardi.  His book is titled (you guessed it) “Bracketology”.

Joe Lunardi was raised in Philadelphia, went to hometown St. Joseph’s University and worked in the communications office at St. Joe’s, too.  He became really interested in college basketball as a youth.

Lunardi closely followed the statistics for all of the intra-city college basketball battles between the Philadelphia Big 5 (St. Joes, LaSalle, Penn, Temple, and Villanova).  Basketball games between these schools (which are located within 17 miles of each other) have been played at the historic Palestra on the campus of Pennsylvania University since 1927.

After his professional work career began, Joe Lunardi spent more time on his hobby of trying to guess the NCAA’s men’s basketball March Madness field.  He read extensively.  He purchased magazines and followed the weekly ratings services during the basketball season.  He even talked to former members of the NCAA selection committee to learn more about their criteria for team selection.

Joe Lunardi’s own NCAA men’s basketball predictions about the teams likely to be selected for March Madness became very accurate.  So much so that he has parlayed it into a lucrative career on television working exclusively with ESPN.  He not only predicts which teams are going to make the field, he assigns the likely tournament seeding for each team.

Historically, Lunardi’s predictions (if not spot-on) usually miss by only one team.

This year, he predicted Rutgers would make the field.  Instead, Nevada made it.  Though Rutgers would be selected for the NIT Tournament, both Nevada and Rutgers lost in the first round of their post-season tournament games.

Though Joe Lunardi’s book does not reveal his secrets, he shared a few interesting tidbits relating to how the NCAA Committee determines the teams which make the field.

Statistically speaking, college basketball teams playing in their home gym win an average of 70% of the time.

In November and December, the most popular college basketball schools like Duke, Kentucky, and Kansas rarely travel.  Their games are usually played in front of sell-out home crowds.

By playing nearly all of their early season games at home, most big name schools generally run-up a rather impressive won-loss record in the first half of the season, too.  In the second half of the year, a tougher conference schedule must be navigated.

For teams in the major conferences such as the ACC, SEC, and Big 12, the goal is to win as many games early season games as possible and then try to post a winning record in conference play.

That formula generally works well as most of those teams will punch a ticket into March Madness.

But what about the colleges playing in the smaller conferences?

Much like college football, many of the smaller schools earn more guaranteed money by traveling to play road games against the big-name powers.  Statistically speaking, those schools have only a 30% chance of winning a game being played at an opponent’s gymnasium.

If a smaller college wants to gain more attention from the NCAA March Madness selection committee, they need to hit the road a few times early in the year to play (and beat) one or more of the traditional powers in their home gym.

Florida Atlantic University of Conference USA (which sports a glittering 35-3 record entering this weekend’s Final Four) needed to do that this season.

The Owls had two early season road tests at Florida (a win) and Ole Miss (a loss).

In the early 1980’s, the NBA’s slogan was “NBA action.  It’s fantastic!”

The national television commercial showed early 1980’s basketball stars Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Julius “Dr. J” Erving in action.  Mixed in among the highlights were happy NBA fans standing, cheering, waving towels, and whooping it up at a pro basketball game.

The slogan was a little bit cheesy, but it worked.

It helped to re-focus the public’s attention on the influx of some very talented younger players coming into the league back in the early 1980’s.  After Michael Jordan joined the league in 1984, the NBA’s popularity in America and worldwide began to soar.

So did the players’ salaries and the owners’ value of their NBA franchises.

The decade of the 1970’s in the National Basketball Association was not very good for the sport.  In most markets, sellouts were rare.  Ticket prices were quite affordable, too.

I still have a 1976 ticket stub from a Houston Rockets basketball game played at the Summit.  It cost $4.50 for a good seat in the lower promenade section of the arena which has now become home to Joel Osteen’s church.

Back in the 1970’s, the NBA struggled to find a national television partner (CBS).  The NBA’s television ratings were so weak that the network tape-delayed Friday night playoff games and ran them after the local news at 10:30PM Central time.  It didn’t help that pro basketball (the NBA and its competitor American Basketball Association) was losing fans as many talented players developed serious drug abuse issues and a recession deepened.

Such was the life for pro basketball players in an 82-game regular season in the 1970’s.  Teams traveled via commercial airlines and bus to games and stayed in mid-level hotels by night.

In the 1970’s, NBA player salaries were still high compared those of the average American worker.  Boston Celtics legend John “Hondo” Havlicek was one of NBA’s highest paid stars at $250,000 in 1977.  The NBA’s average salary for players that year was about $130,000.

My first full-time job coming out of college in 1977 came with a salary of around $12,000 per year.  Your brown-bag toting rookie office nerd was making about 10% of an NBA player’s salary.

Times have changed – at least for professional basketball players!

In 2022, one source indicated that the average college graduate was being offered a job paying about $55,000 per year.  That includes all majors – from the engineers down to the history majors.  It equates to about a 4x rise from my starting salary 46 years ago in 1977.

Last year, the average NBA player’s salary jumped to a whopping $9.6 million.  That is a 73x increase from 1977!

Perhaps I should have worked a little harder on my defense and vertical jump during high school basketball season instead of my math, science, and English classes!

Thanks to increased bidding competition for the television rights for NBA basketball games from national cable outlets like ESPN, Turner Network Television, and others, the league’s team owners and the players have been sharing in a fast-growing pool of money.

Even though television viewership for the NBA’s regular season and playoff games seems range-bound, every new television deal adds more money to the pot for team owners and players to share together.

Teams now have their own private aircraft to fly players and coaches to out-of-town games.  They stay in the most exclusive hotels.  A training staff is always available to keep these multi-millionaires able to lace up their sneakers for as many of their 82-game regular schedule as possible.

On Tuesday, March 28, five planets will be visible near the western horizon within 30 minutes after the sun sets.  If your local sky conditions are clear at sunset, just find the moon and then scan the sky nearby.  You will be able to see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus bunched closely together.  A good set of binoculars will certainly help.

This astronomical phenomenon does not happen very often.  However, the year 2023 is a rare one as we will be treated to a second five-planet show in just a few months.  Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune will be available for viewing around June 17.

Based on this weekend’s sports, June’s second planetary alignment might produce a very unusual NBA Finals!

Throughout history, the effects of the full moon every have been blamed for any number of odd occurrences.  Police have often stated that crime statistics peak and odd occurrences are more likely during full moon events.

If that’s true, I wonder what oddities are being caused by having the gravitational pull of a quintet of planets lined-up in a row?

Let’s consider this weekend’s sporting events.

EXAMPLE 1 – THE NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL TOURNEY

First, can you remember a more topsy-turvy men’s March Madness basketball tournament?

If you selected your NCAA March Madness bracket with at least one #1, #2 or even a #3 seed advancing into the Final Four in Houston this weekend, you are out of luck!

After this past weekend’s wild and crazy action, there will be three teams in Houston making their very first men’s Final Four appearance.  The last time that oddity happened was in 1970.

Ninth seeded Florida Atlantic (Conference USA), #5 seed San Diego State (Mountain West), and #5 seed Miami (ACC) will making their first appearance on the biggest national stage this Saturday evening.

The #4 seeded University of Connecticut from the Big East Conference rounds out the finalists.  The Huskies have won the men’s basketball tournament on four occasions (1999, 2004, 2011, and 2014).  Speaking of lucky number four’s, UConn has yet to play even one tight contest in any of their first four games of the NCAA tournament.

I suspect their improbable run of having four straight breezes will come to an end in Houston sometime this weekend.

On Saturday night in Houston’s cavernous NRG Stadium, Florida Atlantic will lead-off the Final Four against San Diego State in the opening game (5:09PM Central time on CBS).  UConn and Miami will play the nightcap tipping off around 8PM Central.

The 35-3 Florida Atlantic Owls have no fear of playing the higher seeds.  Starting the tournament with a surprisingly weak #9 regional seeding, the FAU Owls have defeated a #8 (Memphis), #16 (Fairleigh Dickinson – which beat top seed Kansas), #4 Tennessee, and #3 Kansas State.  Does anyone think FAU will be quaking in their basketball shoes as they consider playing the #5 seed San Diego State?  Me, either.

Meanwhile, San Diego State took down #1 seed Alabama in Round 3.  The 31-6 Aztecs defensive intensity has allowed opponents just 57 points per game on average through four games.  The Aztecs’ next opponent (“Frantic Atlantic”, as I like to call the Owls) features a free-wheeling offense and three point shooters galore.  This defense vs. offense match-up should be a dandy to watch.

The most hated men’s college basketball team in the state of Texas right now is the University of Miami.

The #5 seeded Hurricanes took down Houston’s favorite local team (#1 seed University of Houston) last Friday night.  The 29-7 Canes then had the audacity of beating another Texas fan favorite, the #2 seed University of Texas on Sunday evening.

The way the media is spinning it, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson is being railroaded out of the league right now.

They are saying that Jackson is being taken advantage of.  Lamar Jackson deserves our collective pity as 31 other NFL teams conspire to keep him from getting the type of long-term contract which the media thinks he deserves.

If he plays this season for those evil Baltimore Ravens, they will be required to pay him a measly $32.4 million for one year.

Poor Lamar Jackson.

The 2019 NFL MVP led the Ravens to a 13-win season while passing for 3,100 yards and 36 touchdowns.  He ran for another 1,200 yards and added seven more scores.  Alas, Baltimore lost in the first round of the playoffs that season, too.

Lamar Jackson’s personal stats while playing under his rookie contract in Baltimore have been nothing short of phenomenal.  Whether passing or running the football, Lamar Jackson has personally accounted for the majority of Baltimore’s offense during his five seasons.

Selected by the Baltimore Ravens with the final first round pick in the 2018 NFL draft, former Louisville Cardinals quarterback Lamar Jackson signed a rookie contract which has paid him nearly $32 million over five seasons.

Inflation in the pay scale for top-level veteran NFL quarterbacks in recent years has been rising much faster than at your local grocery store lately.

Lamar Jackson was the 32nd and final selection in the first round of the 2018 NFL draft.  Four other quarterbacks were selected in the first round ahead of him.

Let’s see how they have fared.

The NFL’s 2018 #1 overall draft pick was Baker Mayfield by the Cleveland Browns.  After a four year roller coaster ride in Cleveland, Baker Mayfield was traded in 2022 to Carolina.  Halfway through his first season in Charlotte, he was waived by the lowly Panthers.  The Los Angeles Rams claimed Baker Mayfield off waivers to fill-in for injured quarterback Mathew Stafford to finish out the season.

That didn’t work out for him, either.  Baker Mayfield recently signed a one year deal worth $4 million to play football in Tampa Bay this fall.  That makes four teams in just five NFL seasons.

The second quarterback selected in the 2018 NFL draft was Sam Darnold.  The “can’t miss” prospect from USC has been anything but successful in the NFL during his first five years.

The #3 overall pick by the New York Jets in 2018, Sam Darnold started 38 games during his first three years with the J-E-T-S.  The team went 13-25.

Darnold was traded prior to his fourth NFL season to Carolina in 2021.  He has fared poorly there, too.  The Panthers went 8-9 in games where Darnold was the starting quarterback.  He sat on the bench for much of last season watching none other than Baker Mayfield play.

After grabbing a $20 million signing bonus, Sam Darnold’s annual salary averaged about $2.5 million for his rookie 4-year NFL contract.  The Panthers exercised Darnold’s 5th year option on his rookie contract and paid him nearly $19 million last season.

Just like Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold didn’t snare a lucrative long-term contract offer after his rookie deal expired.  He recently signed a one-year $4.5 million contract with the San Francisco 49ers.

That makes two quarterback duds in the first three picks of the 2018 NFL draft.  (Note – remember this in a few weeks as you watch April’s 2023 draft with risky quarterbacks being taken early, too).

The third quarterback selected in 2018 was Josh Allen by the Buffalo Bills.  Picked seventh in the first round, Allen suffered through a shaky rookie season in Buffalo.  However, his stats have been improving every season.  Buffalo has become a playoff team in the last four years and a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

As the NCAA men’s basketball tournament continues to dominate the headlines, have you noticed how many college basketball coaches are being made richer after leading their teams into the Big Dance last weekend?

It’s a great time to be the agent for a college basketball coach!

This week, 70-year old basketball coach Rick Pitino left #13 seed Iona College and took a 6-year deal to become the new head coach at St. John’s University.  Earlier in his coaching career, Pitino helped both Kentucky and Louisville win a national championship.  Questions about his recruiting methods (including “Pay for Play” allegations) have dogged him during his college coaching tenure.

The NCAA transfer portal is now in place to facilitate players moving to another school.  Plus, there is cash to be secured utilizing the now-approved Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) process for today’s college athletes.

I’m curious.  Have there been any college recruiting violations so far in 2023?

Rick Pitino’s departure from Iona College in New Rochelle, New York this week has provided another NCAA tournament coach a chance to cash-in on his former job at Iona.

Less than a week after leading 16th seeded Fairleigh Dickinson to an upset win over #1 seed Purdue, coach Tobin Anderson pounced on the job opening at Iona.  Anderson had been at FDU for just one season after a long career of coaching at Division II and III schools.

The dominoes are falling quickly in college basketball.  One job is filled to leave another vacated.  Expect more of the same for the next few weeks.

Yesterday, Paul Mills, the basketball coach for NCAA men’s #12 seed Oral Roberts University, answered a lucrative call from Wichita State University.  Mills agreed to become the Shockers next head coach in a multi-year deal.

The next coach at Oral Roberts in Tulsa will have a hard time beating Coach Mills’ record this year.  The Golden Eagles won every single conference game including the conference tournament!

Arizona State head basketball coach (and former Duke point guard) Bobby Hurley led the Sun Devils into this year’s NCAA tournament as a #12 seed.  Though ASU lost to TCU on a last second shot in the tournament’s first round, the university announced a nifty two-year contract extension for Coach Hurley.

Rodney Terry is currently the interim head coach for the University of Texas.

After winning his first two NCAA tournament games last weekend, RT (as the players call him) is likely to cash-in soon as the team’s permanent head coach or will accept a top job with another university.  Coach Terry has done a fantastic job with the Longhorns after Chris Beard was fired early in the season.  The longer Texas continues in the NCAA tournament, the more money Rodney Terry will be commanding soon.

The coaching carousel and associated boom in the moving van business continues at other schools this week, too.

In Natchitoches, Louisiana, the Northwestern State University Demons hired a new basketball coach one year ago this week.  The school’s long-time basketball coach Mike McConathy retired in March, 2022, and Corey Gipson was hired.  The new coach had been a long-time assistant at Missouri State.

The Demons went 22-11 this season.  The team finished in second place in the Southland Conference during Coach Gipson’s first year at Northwestern State.  Last weekend, the coach accepted an offer to take the top basketball job at his alma mater – Austin Peay in Kentucky.

Within a matter of days, Northwestern State announced the hiring of their new b...

It’s nice to be back after a week of spring break vacation.  My lovely wife (Mrs. SwampSwami) and I visited the Mobile, Alabama/Pensacola, Florida area for a few days.  Alas, so did thousands of other spring break vacationers!

For those of you who prefer a peaceful walk instead a dip in the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf State Park in Alabama has miles of paved paths and wooden bridges over the swampy areas.  We also toured Bellingrath Gardens one morning.  My patience was rewarded by having the chance to play 18 holes of golf at the Par-3 short course at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail location in Mobile.  If you’ve never played one of the RTJ Trail courses, do it!  This unique 18-hole short course was a pleasant two hours of golf and a very challenging layout.

On the return trip, we made a half-day visit to downtown Laurel, Mississippi.  No, we didn’t see the “Home Town” folks from cable TV, but the city’s renewed downtown district is really special.  Free plug alert!  We had a terrific lunch at Wilson’s Commissary.  Their plate lunches (about $9 apiece) were generous, tasty, and quite filling!

We arrived home in time for yours truly to begin his annual television marathon of observing NCAA March Madness college basketball games.  From Thursday at 11AM through Sunday night at 11PM, there were 48 men’s basketball games played on four different television channels.  Yes, I probably watched parts of about 40 of them!

Nearly everyone’s men’s bracket was kablooeyed by #16 seeded Fairleigh Dickinson of New Jersey.  Their thrilling first round win came over the most overrated basketball team in March Madness history, #1 seed Purdue (now 29-6 and sitting at home).  Purdue has now lost to double digit underdogs in their last three NCAA appearances.  P.U. to Purdue!

On CBS Sports.com, you can check out that SwampSwamiSports’s men’s bracket is now ranked #940,469 overall.  Actually, I moved up during the day on Sunday from 1.4 million to “only” 940,000th place!

My men’s bracket (where I selected the University of Houston to win) has just Houston and Gonzaga with a chance for the Final Four.  My other two selections (Duke and Virginia) were sent packing this weekend.

As for the women’s NCAA basketball tournament, I am faring much better!  CBS Sports.com showed SwampSwamiSports at #335,402.  There’s good news, though.  I still have all four of my Final Four teams (LSU vs. UConn and South Carolina vs. Texas) alive after the first two rounds.

As mentioned in my previous pre-tournament post, the NCAA women’s tourney generally has fewer upsets than the men’s side.  That was true again in the opening rounds this year except for #1 seeds Stanford and Indiana getting bounced.

I picked LSU to win it all in the women’s Final Four with a huge upset over South Carolina in the finale.

It’s hard to pick against LSU coach Kim Mulkey.  She won two national tournament championships as a player at Louisiana Tech.  As a coach, she took Baylor to three NCAA titles in 21 seasons.

This week begins the Sweet 16 portion for both the men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments.

Men’s games for Thursday (winners play on Saturday):

East Region – New York City

#4 Tennessee vs. #9 Florida Atlantic – The Vols took out Duke last weekend, while FAU sports a gaudy 33-4 record.   This game will feature the defense of Tennessee vs. the run and gun three point shooting of the FAU Owls.  If 75 or more points are scored here, I like the Owls’ chances to fly into the Elite Eight.

#3 Kansas State vs. #7 Michigan State

K-State beat Kentucky and Michigan State downed #2 seed Marquette to get here.  Though my bracket predicted Kansas State will win this game, Michigan State’s experienced coach Tom Izzo could...

Attention, supervisors of the world!  For the next two Thursdays and Fridays, you should plan on seeing a spike in sick days and vacation requests from the staff.

It’s MARCH MADNESS time once again!

The coming days at the office will see the second largest wave of unofficial pools of monetized guessing – trailing only the Super Bowl.

Yes, employees may struggle with work for a few days this week.  Selecting the winning teams in the NCAA Men’s and Women’s basketball tournaments will become a priority Monday through Wednesday across the nation this week.

Winning the annual March Madness office pool is serious business, indeed!

Some of the entrants will consult the brackets at the beginning of the week and select most of the top seeded men’s teams to advance into the Sweet 16.  From there, some of these chickens (OK, these generally some of the smarter people who understand that the odds are in their favor) will develop their NCAA brackets by sticking with a #1 or #2 seed all the way into the final game.

When selecting the women’s basketball champion, sticking with the favorites has been a reliable winning strategy.  Women’s basketball rarely sees the lowest seeded teams win more than one game during their championship tournament.

On the other hand, those rascally men seem to produce at least one or two renegade teams every year to cause chaos for NCAA tournament bracket selections.  These surprise teams somehow keep finding a way to win one, two, three and, sometimes, even four games.  By then, your bracket has been “busted” as your pick for the national champion pick is sent home early.

Rest easy!  You will have millions of friends in the busted bracket business within the next two weeks.

Heaven forbid if you harbor any ideas of submitting a perfect bracket with no losses at all.

I consulted the NCAA’s website to see what the chances of correctly selecting every game correctly for the men’s tournament field.  For fans of the movie Caddyshack, you have a better statistical chance of being hit by lightning while playing the best round of golf of your life during a driving rainstorm with a caddie named Carl on the bag than selecting the winner of every single game of this annual college basketball tournament.

There is a one in 120 billion chance of achieving selection perfection.

If you have given thought to simply flipping a coin for better results, think again!  The NCAA stats show that you have a one in 9.2 quintillion chance of selecting the winner in every game of the tournament by flipping a coin.

Just go with your gut and take your best shot.

Some people like to pick their Final Four teams based on some common element.  Perhaps you don’t know a thing about the basketball teams, but you have a favorite color which brings you luck.

Men’s teams with blue uniforms have done quite well in recent years.

Long-time top teams such as Kansas (the defending champions), UCLA, Gonzaga, Duke, and, of course, Kentucky wear blue uniforms.  And don’t forget about Creighton!  They are the Blue Jays.

Red might be a winning color this year.  Top teams in 2023 featuring that particular hue include the University of Houston, Alabama, Indiana, Texas A&M (actually, they’re maroon but that’s close enough for me), Maryland, and Arkansas.

Teams with unusual nicknames have shown a tendency to surprise a few teams in nearly every NCAA men’s tournament.

There is no shortage of teams with uncommon nicknames in 2023.   Look no further than possible top seed Purdue (Boilermakers), TCU (Horned Frogs), Xavier (Musketeers), Providence (Friars), Furman (Paladins), Northern Kentucky (Norsemen), and, one of my favorites, UC-Irvine (the Anteaters).

The XFL recently completed Week #3 of its ten-game regular season.  As we predicted a few weeks ago (they don’t call me “Swami” for nothing!), the XFL’s television ratings have plummeted after viewers sampled the first week of spring pro football games.  Likewise, in-stadium attendance for the league has dropped from a lukewarm 15,000 per game in Week #1 down to about 10,000 fans per game in Weeks #2 and #3.

After just three weeks, the XFL is quickly moving toward being placed on life support.

Though the upcoming Week #4 revenues should improve with more than 30,000 fans expected to be on hand in St. Louis for the home debut of the 2-1 BattleHawks, the weekly costs needed to operate the eight-team XFL have remained constant.

One of the XFL’s primary owners is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.   He has earned a ton of money from his pro wrestling and acting career.  His net worth is estimated at $800 million.

Can you imagine how hard it must be for him to watch some of his career earnings being flushed down the XFL toilet every week?

STORY TIME!

Decades ago, I learned a bit of investment wisdom which has served me well.  Most of us investors struggle when faced with the painful decision to sell a stock which is losing money.

For me, I feel lousy once any stock loses anywhere from 10-15% of its value after I purchase it.  Eventually, I adopted a hard and fast rule to sell ANY stock once that negative threshold has been reached.  At least I will retain 85-90% of the initial amount invested.  Plus, if I still like the stock, I can try to purchase it again at a later date once the price hits the bottom and starts to climb again.  .

For example, let’s say that I had purchased 100 shares of Enron (RIP) stock at $50 per share back in 1999.  With my $5,000 invested in Enron, I would watch the price of that stock climb to over $80 per share by the summer of 2000.  Woo hoo!

Alas, Enron’s bubble burst.  News surfaced about some of the company’s shady internal financial affairs.  The stock price was beaten into submission in just one year as it eventually fell to less than $2 per share.

If I had sold Enron at the top, I would have made $30/share or $3,000 on my initial investment!

If I sold Enron at $45/share (taking a 10% loss), $4,500 would still remain of the original $5,000 investment.  It might sting, but not too badly.

But if I froze and failed to react as the stock price cratered, I would have lost $4,800 of the initial $5,000 investment in a little more than one year.

What does this have to do with the XFL?  Plenty!

The moral of this story is to be honest with yourself after making a bad investment decision.

By placing a limit on the level of acceptable losses, you are prepared to take your financial lumps.  Hopefully, you will learn from those mistakes and become a smarter investor in the future.

LET’S REVIEW HOW THE XFL (as an investment) IS PERFORMING FOR ITS OWNERS

After three weeks of the spring football league’s ten-game regular season, the weekly in-stadium attendance has fallen to around 10,000 fans per game.  The television viewership has fallen to about 500,000 per game during Week #3 (down 50% from Week #1’s ratings).

On the revenue side of the XFL equation, let’s first look at ticket revenues.  If the average net ticket price collected is about $20 per person (a fair estimate), weekly ticket sales would generate $200,000 in revenue per game.  Let’s be generous and say that the average XFL fan in attendance will buy some concessions, a program, and other XFL merchandise to generate an additional $10 per person w...