Through day 2 of this March Madness, I still have a couple of brackets which are doing pretty well. I have different brackets on ESPN, Yahoo! Sports and Facebook. I’ll break each one down but the best of the 3 is a tie with ESPN and Yahoo! Sports both having 26/32 correct picks and then Facebook only one game behind at 25/32 but that might be the one in the best shape.

A couple of things to note before my review:

• With round one now complete … the ESPN.com Tournament Challenge looks like this:
• Approximately 4.8 million completed brackets were submitted.
• There are no brackets that are completely correct.
• There are 3 brackets that have missed only one game.
• There are 95 brackets that have missed two games.
• There are 1,111 brackets that have missed three games.
• Most brackets, on average, have missed 10 games.

  Click ‘Read more‘ to read the rest of review of my brackets.

ESPN: (Link to Bracket)

Correct Upsets: (9) Northern Iowa, (10) Georgia Tech, (10) Missouri, (10) St. Mary’s, (11) Old Dominion, (11) Washington, (12) Cornell, (13) Murray State:
I was beginning to get a little worried in this bracket with so many upsets and I did get burned on a couple too many 5/12 calls but was rewarded for my faith in a weaker Big East and picking ODU and Washington to beat Notre Dame and Marquette. 8/9 and even 7/10 to an extent I don’t consider upsets as much but 11+ are the real ones where this should not happen but it does — every year. Congrats to Cornell and Murray State and hopefully they can win a game or two more and bust some more brackets.

Incorrect Favorites: (3) Georgetown and (8) Texas:
I don’t think anyone in their right would have taken Ohio to upset Georgetown. A really tough year in the early goings for Big East might have them re-evaluating the tough conference schedule and tournament but I don’t think you change anything. You see favorites like Syracuse and Pittsburgh really blowing their opponents out like they should and a Villanova team that really struggled down the stretch showed it in a tough one against Robert Morris.

As for Texas, they had that game to win. A missed free throw inside 10 seconds and unable to come up with a semi-loose ball in the paint allowed Wake Forest to come down the court and eventually hit the game winner. Tough way for Texas to go out but it just symbolizes how rocky of a season it was for a team that was ranked #1 in the country at one point in the season.

Final Four: (1) Kansas, (1) Duke, (4) Wisconsin, (7) BYU.

Champion: (1) Kansas defeats (1) Duke.

Overall: This bracket does have 3 incorrect picks from the Sweet 16 and ideally, you only want to lose 1 or 2 from the first round but I will take it for now. I really like what I have done in this bracket in terms of upset predictions but I think this one finishes 3rd best out of the 3 I am listing in this post.

Yahoo! Sports: (Link to Bracket)

Correct Upsets: (9) Northern Iowa, (10) St. Mary’s, (12) Cornell, (13) Murray State:
No new upsets here from above, nothing more to add here.

Incorrect Favorites: (3) Georgetown, (6) Marquette, (6) Notre Dame, (7) Clemson, (7) Oklahoma State:
Way too many favorites there incorrectly picked and this is more of a protection bracket in the chance that Big East did not fail, this would have done even better than where it is right now at 26/32.

Final Four: (1) Duke, (1) Syracuse, (2) West Virginia, (6) Tennessee.

Champion: (1) Duke defeats (1) Syracuse.

Overall: Incorrectly picking Notre Dame and Marquette to be in the Sweet 16 might end up costing me in this bracket but I like my chances for it to finish 2nd best out of the 3. 13/16 still alive for the Sweet 16 but no mistakes into the Elite 8 yet and hopefully that will carry me.

Facebook: (Link to Bracket)

Correct Upsets: (9) Wake Forest, (10) St. Mary’s, (11) Old Dominion, (11) Washington, (12) Cornell, (13) Murray State:
New Mexico State and Utah State gave me momentary glimpses of hope that every single one of my predicted upsets would come true but it was not meant to be.

Incorrect Favorites: (3) Georgetown, (7) Oklahoma State, (7) Clemson, (8) UNLV:
Less than a handful of incorrect favorites here and selections of OK St and Clemson were just foolish on my part to think they might pull out the win even though they were overrated coming into the tournament.

Final Four: (1) Syracuse, (2) Villanova, (3) New Mexico, (4) Maryland.

Champion: (2) Villanova defeats (1) Syracuse.

Overall: By far, the best shape any of my brackets are in. 7 incorrect picks in the first round but I have none of those teams advancing into the Sweet 16 and all of those teams are still in tact. I think (6) Tennessee should be able to beat (14) Ohio and (5) Butler might be able to hang on against (13) Murray State where the right half of this bracket for me is basically chalk — only into the Sweet 16 though.

There is no argument in my mind about who should have been this year’s NFL Defensive Player of the Year and that was Charles Woodson who did end up getting 28 of the 50 votes with New York Jets’ Darrelle Revis coming a distant second with 14.

According to the ESPN.com article, “the versatile Woodson tied for the league lead with nine interceptions, returning three for touchdowns, and was a key to the Packers’ turnaround on defense. His role in Green Bay’s performance — second in the league in overall defense, first in interceptions (30), takeaways (40) and turnover margin (plus-24).”

Following the Packers all year long certainly made it obvious that he should win even though the local Revis came on strong towards the end of the season shutting down key #1 receivers but this is an award for the entire year, not just the first half or the second half of the season.

One thing to notice from today’s announcement was Rex Ryan’s reply and standing up for his player. He said, ”a number that I think is interesting is eight.  No, that’s not the amount of touchdown passes Green Bay gave up against Arizona.  That’s the amount of touchdown passes we gave up all season.  The biggest reason for that is Darrelle Revis.”

The Jets’ coach has a big mouth but he always backs his team and doesn’t hold anything back. You can respect that in a coach but no way was he winning the award this year. This year it belonged to Charles Woodson.

If you didn’t see it for yourself on ESPN, take a look at this filthy little crackback block that Brett Favre threw at the knees of Texans safety Eugene Wilson in the third quarter of the Monday Night preseason game.

A great job by the ESPN guys on calling the play dirty right away and I probably wouldn’t expect anything more to happen since a penalty was called on the play. Just giving me more ammo to not like Brett Favre more than I already don’t.

Well Done #4.

Yahoo! Sports: Brett Favre throws a dirty block at Eugene Wilson’s knees

I had read it in newspapers and blogs online… I had heard about it on ESPN SportsCenter but I finally the video just now.

Chad OchoCinco (@OGOchoCinco) is a pretty darn good kicker — both for PATs and a regular kickoff as well. What is it that this man can’t do? Maybe he and @The_Real_Shaq can compete sometime in a decathalon. Now that is quality television waiting to happen.

Enjoy the kicking video:

If you’re interested in pretty good soccer recap of games as well as opinions regarding moves and upcoming matches, I highly recommend checking out Matchday LIVE! USA (link). Even though the updates at times are few and far between, the posts that are up there are nothing short of quality pieces. Take a look at the latest one from this morning titled “NBC’s “Business Decision” a National Embarrassment”

The post is regarding the upcoming USA vs. Mexico match that is slated for 4 PM EST later today. If you’re on a basic cable package or if you happen to be on campus anywhere in the country, it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to see this match simply because it’s not being shown my any major network. ESPN can’t show it because NBC has the exclusive rights to that match since the Mexican Federation decides who gets the rights to matches being played at Azteca. NBC, on the other hand, decides to air this “Showdown at the Azteca” on an obscure channel called mun2 (moon-dos – pronunciation courtesy of Matchday LIVE!)

A quick Google search will tell you that the soccer-crazed masses are concerned. ESPN doesn’t show a match listing in their schedule for US-Mexico. Neither does Fox Soccer Channel. Fear not, says NBC, it’s on mun2. That’s “moon-dos.” I’m sure you’ve all heard of it. It’s that hip, trendy Latino network obscure bicultural channel no one has ever heard of that is so far up the digital cable dial your brain will be addled into confusing the two teams’ kits when you finally get to the match. What some are passing off as a business decision, however, is clearly nothing short of one of the biggest jokes in sports media coverage of the decade, right up there with the 8PM World Series start, Roger Goodell wanting to expand the NFL to 18 games, and NBC’s (do you sense a theme here) creating a new network for Olympic coverage just weeks before the event that no one received on time.

Please, NBC, I understand the business decision involved, but this time you’ve overstepped the line. I’m sure the millions of fans watching the match without HD having finally reached channel 8,794,316.2 will really be pleased to be transported back into the mid-90s. At least back then it clear what the networks thought about the game, and it continued to push on and thrive nonetheless. Here’s hoping that NBC’s stupidity only provides a renewed opportunity for football to do the same thing now in 2009.

That’s only an excerpt of the pretty good piece by my friend Mike and be sure to head over to Matchday LIVE! USA to read the rest of the article and his other updates as well.