{"id":2634,"date":"2009-02-27T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2009-02-27T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/bring-on-march-madness-we-nee.html"},"modified":"2009-02-27T11:00:21","modified_gmt":"2009-02-27T11:00:21","slug":"bring-on-march-madness-we-nee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/bring-on-march-madness-we-nee.html","title":{"rendered":"Zzzzzzz: Time for March Madness!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bring on March Madness&#8211;we need it!<br \/>\nFor a competitive guy like me&#8211;and Paul the Apostle competed so I know it&#8217;s a good trait&#8211;this is a lousy time of the year to watch television. There&#8217;s not a lot of drama. There&#8217;s not a lot that&#8217;s compelling. There&#8217;s not much televised competition. It&#8217;s just boring.<br \/>\nThink about it. Football is over. Baseball hasn&#8217;t started yet. The NBA playoffs don&#8217;t heat up until May. At least Tiger&#8217;s back on the tour, but the Masters&#8217; doesn&#8217;t happen for two months. NASCAR has started, but these early season races don&#8217;t count for as much, do they?<br \/>\nEarlier this week, the Oscar competition ended. &#8220;American Idol&#8221; has too far to go. Jack Bauer&#8217;s only halfway through his afternoon in &#8220;24.&#8221; Gosh, we&#8217;ve got to wait long enough to see if our economy comes back&#8211;can&#8217;t we get some excitement or conclusion or competition to liven things up?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThankfully, that annual college tradition that has become a regular office tradition is soon to arrive. Yes, the NCAA Basketball playoffs will soon be here, otherwise known as &#8220;March Madness.&#8221; Every major sports website will offer a free chance to win mega bucks if you can pick all the games right. It&#8217;s statistically impossible to win, but it&#8217;s easy to play even if you don&#8217;t know basketball. My daughter Lindy (now 8th grade) has won our pool three of the last four years!<br \/>\nSo it&#8217;s a boring time for sports television. And the competitive season of the arts industry is all over except for the Emmy&#8217;s. But for the next several weeks, you can watch hundreds of college student-athletes playing for right to be part of the Great American Pool Contest and, oh yes, to represent their schools and play the game they love. It&#8217;s awesome reality-TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bring on March Madness&#8211;we need it! For a competitive guy like me&#8211;and Paul the Apostle competed so I know it&#8217;s a good trait&#8211;this is a lousy time of the year to watch television. There&#8217;s not a lot of drama. There&#8217;s not a lot that&#8217;s compelling. There&#8217;s not much televised competition. It&#8217;s just boring. Think about&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,1],"tags":[549,548,547,531],"class_list":["post-2634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-sports","category-television","tag-emmys","tag-march-madness","tag-ncaa-basketball-tournament","tag-oscars"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Zzzzzzz: Time for March Madness!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/bring-on-march-madness-we-nee.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Zzzzzzz: Time for March Madness!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bring on March Madness&#8211;we need it! For a competitive guy like me&#8211;and Paul the Apostle competed so I know it&#8217;s a good trait&#8211;this is a lousy time of the year to watch television. There&#8217;s not a lot of drama. There&#8217;s not a lot that&#8217;s compelling. There&#8217;s not much televised competition. It&#8217;s just boring. Think about&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/bring-on-march-madness-we-nee.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-27T11:00:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Douglas Howe\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Zzzzzzz: Time for March Madness!","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/bring-on-march-madness-we-nee.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Zzzzzzz: Time for March Madness!","og_description":"Bring on March Madness&#8211;we need it! For a competitive guy like me&#8211;and Paul the Apostle competed so I know it&#8217;s a good trait&#8211;this is a lousy time of the year to watch television. There&#8217;s not a lot of drama. There&#8217;s not a lot that&#8217;s compelling. There&#8217;s not much televised competition. It&#8217;s just boring. 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