Time For the Madness!

Hey, UNC Commies, it’s that time again. . . .

2006 3^RD ANNUAL COMM DEPT. MARCH MADNESS “UNOFFICIAL” POOL!

I welcome you all to participate in my third annual March Madness pool for college basketball! This year we'll be conducting the pool on CBS Sportsline, so if you are interested in playing, and have not received an invite from me, email me about your desire to play and I'll take care of it. Additionally, if you cannot connect to Sportsline for whatever reason and want to play, you can email me your picks and I can manually enter them for you in the game.

The rules:

1. I, Steve Collins, am the Commissioner for the basketball pool. Of course, the first rule of fight club is not to talk about fight club.

2. The entry donation for this years’ pool is $5. That’s a decrease from last year, but I thought it would help allow for greater participation. You may enter as many as three entries if you wish, as long as you make the donation for each entry. We will worry about collecting your donations after we get back from Spring Break.

3. This year, the breakdown of donation money will be 80% for first place, 20% for second place. In addition, we will keep the “Raphael Ginsberg Memorial Goat Award,” which means that if you come in last place, you will get your entry fee returned.

4. Because we are doing the brackets online, there is a strict cut-off for bracket entries. You will not be able to participate if you have not submitted your entries by 12:00 Noon on Thursday, March 16th.

5. When you make your bracket selections, you need to do so for the entire tournament. That is, all 63 games, excepting the stupid “play-in” game that happens on Wednesday. We all know they are going to lose their first round game anyways.

6. Your picks will be scored according to the following criteria:

First round advancers correctly picked = 1 pt. ea.

Second round advancers correctly picked = 2 pts. ea.

Sweet Sixteen advancers correctly picked = 4 pts. ea.

Elite Eight advancers correctly picked = 8 pts. ea.

Final Four advancers correctly picked = 10 pts. ea.

Championship game winner correctly picked = 15 pts.

The winner will be the entry that scores the most points. Total possible points: 163.

7. Tiebreakers will be decided by an extra feature on the entry form: total points for the championship game, regardless of who is playing in it. Enter a total number.

8. The Commissioner reserves the right to settle potential disputes and/or infringements.

Good luck!