The Pool Dominatrix

Today, quite a few underdogs confidently grabbed leads like they were true contenders. But also like one grabs a handful of sand. The leads slipped away right before all our eyes, like they were sitting on a greased pole.

I tell this story every year only because it's so applicable, but I liken these ballsy underdog leads to when I was twelve years old and I borrowed a heavy, glass blender from a next-door neighbor. After retrieving the blender at my mother's request, I walked back to my apartment. Ten feet from my door, the large pitcher of the blender teetered out of its base and flipped forward. I snatched at it with my right hand and it spun left. I cupped it with my left hand and it somersaulted back up. I juggled and batted and fumbled that damn blender for at least a minute before it fell -- in the slowest of motion -- and shattered in a million pieces on my front stoop. With the adrenaline pumping in my ears and while looking at the glass shards, I thought, "I was so close. I almost had it." The point is, I was Murray State and the blender was the lead over North Carolina. I was Penn and the blender the narrow lead over Texas; UAB's lead over Kentucky, and most lamentable, 16th seed Albany's run against UConn that almost made history. After a 13 point lead, Albany tossed their blender off a skyscraper where it then busted into powder. And I'm sure they and Davidson and the Northern Iowa thought to themselves with adrenaline in their ears after the shattering sound of the ending buzzer, "I was so close. I almost had it." A couple of teams were lucky enough to catch the blender and hold on to it: Bradley over Kansas! NC State over brain fartin' Cal. George Mason over MSU! And Northwestern's Jermaine Wallace took the blender and threw it in the basket from behind the three point line with only five tenths of second on the clock crushing #3 seed Iowa's dance dreams.

As for the pool, I can see you all shaking in your boots. The blender is a fragile and elusive thing. Enjoy it will you can. If your pool was shattered today, stay engaged; more great games are sure to come, as well as the joy of watching other pooler's brackets go down in a blaze.