Three Brief Items

1. Here's an interesting article about the frequency of upsets in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament. In a nutshell, it suggests that the downward trend in upsets (till this year's aberration) was caused because the NCAA tweaked its formulas for seeding. Adjusting the RPI, plus allowing for some other factors, resulted in better seeding and, consequently, fewer upsets.

Proving, once again, that stats are ruining sports.

2. Jeff Pearlman, ever the nice guy, wrote an article called: Lessons of Washington, Gonzalez sagas: nice guys finish first. The article suggests that Ron Washington was forgiven an egregious transgression because he's a nice guy, and Bobby Gonzalez was fired because he isn't a nice guy.

Therefore, the lesson to be learned is that nice guys finish first.

I'm pretty sure that there are a few counterexamples out there. Readers?

God bless Jeff Pearlman. I enjoy some of his stuff, but man that guy likes flowers, Cinderellas, hopeful stories, hardworking people, honesty, and general morality. He's like Rick Reilly except he is a better writer.

3. Front-page news at ESPN.com on March 21: Vikings coach Brad Childress has officially stated that he's willing to tolerantly and patiently wait out Brett Favre until Brett Favre has taken "all the time he needs". This article is particularly wonderful because it contains the following quotation from Mr. Childress:

As a coach, you're a mother hen, you'd like him to be there for all of it. But I'm enough of a realist to know that's probably not going to be the case.

Rarely do you hear a 100% red-blooded American football coach refer to himself as a mother hen.