March Madness 2009

It's that time again--the only time of year that I watch basketball, the NCAA tournament. (I refuse to call it the "men's tournament" because the only women's sport I watch is beach volleyball.) For the record, I'm predicting Pitt to win it all over Louisville, with Memphis and UNC rounding out the Final 4. My big first-round upset predictions are Maryland over California (UMD is up 3 at the half as I write this), Mississippi State over Washington, VCU over UCLA, and the Hilltoppers of Western Kentucky taking out the Fightin' Illini.

It's just too bad the NCAA's new and "improved" video player sucks so bad. Just a few of the new "features" include:

• Gigantic advertising banners that take up approximately 1/3 of the available viewing room in fullscreen mode. That's not fullscreen, you greedy scumbags. That's 2/3 screen. And just to add insult to injury...

• The inability to switch games during commercial breaks. Why would I want to check out the near-upset of #2 Memphis during the commercial break of the also-close LSU vs. Butler game?

• Underestimation of bandwidth. Apparently they've failed to realize that 90% of the audience will be watching the daytime games on our superfast work connections and therefore we'll all want the high-quality feed. I actually want to see the shots go in, not hang in midair while the word "Buffering" and the Wheel of Waiting sit on my screen.
  

• Microsoft Silverlight. If your computer had balls, Silverlight would be the steel-toed boot slamming into them. I'm not a Microsoft-basher (in fact, I'm a Microsoft-basher-basher), but in this case, I've got to call a spade a spade.

I suspect 99% of these problems would be solved if the NCAA would follow baseball's lead and ditch Silverlight in favor of Adobe Flash (or just stick with good old Windows Media Player. Really, was that so bad?) Better luck next year, hoops fans.