Tag Archives: March Madness

How To Resolve Conflicts And Have Relationships That Last

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Recently, the Good Wife told me I am a conflict avoider. I told her I didn’t want to talk about it.

I may not communicate as much as she’d like, but my hilarious, nonstop comedy routine has to compensate. Doesn’t it?

We’re learning to work though conflict by assiduously avoiding “you” statements and instead saying how we feel and what we want. What the social scientists refer to as “soft skills”.

Here’s the relationship saving formula, just in case, in the distant future, any of you ever experience conflict with someone special. I feel ____________. I want ____________.

I shocked the Gal Pal last night when I voluntarily shared some of my innermost thoughts. I asked her, “Are you up to doing some active listening?” Half in shock, she quickly said, “Yes.”

“I feel bereft. I want UCLA to play better next year so I don’t have to go through another March Madness feeling so left out.”

After she thoughtfully paraphrased what I was feeling and wanted, and showed me real empathy, I felt a lot better.

Conflict avoider my ass. I deftly wield the softest of skills.

March Madness

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Watching the tournament in real time feels like watching one long commercial with intermittent basketball breaks. I have to mute the sound. And the officiating video replays aren’t quite as bad as football and pro basketball, but they’re still bad. One time in the first round the broadcaster said, “And this official replay is sponsored by X.” I can’t remember the company because I was going into epileptic shock. The sports watching apocalypse is upon us.

I have one regret. Larry, my college roommate extraordinaire, has a hundy on the Bruins to win it all. I wish I did too. When that happens, he’ll collect $1,900. Wonder if he’ll claim his $1,800 on his taxes?

At least I’ll get another t-shirt as a result of the great East-West battle royale. Probably. Richie had Virginia, Duke, and Miami. I had Arizona, UCLA, and St. Mary’s. I told Richie, despite all the weightlifting I’ve been doing, I’m still a medium. Go figure.

Zag Nation and everyone else still standing, prepare yourselves. The UCLA Bruins are cutting down the nets. And it’s gonna be oh so sweet.

Stop And Go

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People who evaluate the viability of a commute to work often error in only considering the distance. They’ll decide 10 miles is doable, 15 or 20 is not. But anybody who has commuted much at all knows it’s not that simple because an uninterrupted 15 or 20 mile drive is way better than a 10 mile one in stop-and-go traffic. Because the constant changing of speed and monitoring of space is mentally exhausting.

Which brings me to college basketball’s March Madness, one of our country’s greatest sporting events.

I watch a fair amount of television sports, but because I’m impatient, about two-thirds of that viewing is shortly after the event is over so that I can fast forward through the endless commercial breaks. Not just that, sometimes I watch basketball games and golf tournaments in “2x” speed, which is a fair bit faster than real time. I also fast forward through field goals and free throws, deducing the outcome of them from the score change. Given my advanced remote control skills, I can watch a 40 minute college basketball game in about. . . 40 minutes.

Which brings me to Saturday’s West Regional in Portland, Oregon where I watched UCLA turn up the defensive intensity against St. Mary’s in person and advance to the Sweet Sixteen Friday in Philadelphia.* It was WEIRD watching the game in very real time because of the incessant breaks in the action.

Like driving in stop-and-go traffic, the game is played in twelvish two to four minute segments. That’s because each team gets a certain number of timeouts and then there are pre-planned “television timeouts”. To add insult to injury, now soul crushing video replays of especially close officiating calls make the spectating an even greater test of patience.

How is any team supposed to sustain any momentum? And how are fans expected to stay tuned in through the millions of mind numbing commercials?

It’s enough to make someone want to watch soccer.

*I watched some other team beat some other team too.

Dispassionate Madness

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Give the debacle that was the UCLA bball season this winter, I nearly gave up March Madness for Lent. But alas, the allure of winning big bucks in the office pool (so far ten people have put in five dollars each) inspired me to fill out and submit a bracket. Despite my late-adapting techno idiosyncracies, as an experiment, I decided to go with the Wall Street Journal’s computer generated bracket from beginning to end. Regrettably, we have Puke beating Kansas in the championship game.

One thing is nagging me, how does a computer factor in game location, crowd intensity, and 20 year olds’ emotions? It’s not like swimming where the predicted finish of the finalists in any given heat is quite predictable. The tourney’s popularity is largely a result of unforeseen upsets.

If the computer could speak for itself, it would probably say that by factoring in every result from the season its accounted for home/away, crowd intensity, and emotional variables. As a result, we have BYU in the Final Four. The experiment is whether a computer can predict upsets. Hope so.

Here’s a relevant excerpt from Tuesday’s journal:

To better understand upsets, and to find the best way to predict them, The Wall Street Journal looked at the 40 biggest NCAA tournament upsets since 2004—the games where the surprise winner was seeded at least five spots below the favorite. For each upset, we compared the teams involved by their performance in two dozen categories. The majority of these comparisons were based on how the teams matched up—for instance, how well one team shot three-pointers during the season and how well their opponents defended against them. The same head-to-head comparisons were made for factors like rebounding and steals. In the end, we found a few strong similarities between all of these matchups. But there was only one unequivocal theme: the importance of turnovers. In 30 of the 40 games, the underdog “David” team had been better all season at protecting the ball and avoiding turnovers than the “Goliath” team had been at forcing them. Getting steals also is critical.

How should I spend my winnings?