Come join your fellow Buckeye Fans to chat about today’s NCAA Tournament Round Two games, including Ohio State’s tilt against Gonzaga. Tip-off is 2:45 EDT.

You can join our Yahoo Tourney Pick’em here. The password is “vernon”.

Please join us by joining our Yahoo Tourney Pick’em here. The password is “vernon”. Because of course it is.

We don’t have any prizes to offer this year besides the undying adulation of your Buckeye brethren. Do it for the glory.

Don’t disgust Tom Crean.

Update: While we might not have any prizes for the MotSaG Pick ‘Em, the Buckeye Bloggers Network is also holding a contest with real honest to goodness prizes. Read about how to join here.

“I voted for who I thought was the best team in the country based on the entire body of work during the season,” Adras told USA Today. “I believe it is Ohio State. I want to congratulate Connecticut for winning the NCAA tournament. They deserved it.”

…Wait, what?

All Bennett has proven with this comment is that he doesn’t understand how the BCS works. The system is at least two-thirds opinion–opinions of sportswriters or whoever votes in the Harris Poll, opinions of coaches who can’t even reasonably watch enough games to know what they’re talking about and then won’t even share their final votes with us. And it’s only two-thirds opinion if you buy that computer algorithms designed by humans (and most of which are not available for public dissection) are somehow free of bias or unable to be manipulated. Mysterious enough for you?

Bennett wants to rid tournament selection of human error, a noble goal, but also an impossible one. How exactly does one determine when “human error” has been made, especially in this case? What demonstrable method is available to illustrate the obvious (to Bennett anyway) truth that Saint Mary’s belongs in the tournament? There is none. Attempting to do so only opens a series of progressively absurd cans of worms:

What makes a schedule “strong”?
What makes an opponent “quality”?
What makes a team “deserving”?

Coach Bennett would argue that as long as every team is playing by the same rules, it doesn’t matter. But that’s impossible too. A Big East schedule is, by any reasonable measure, always going to be “tougher” than an Ivy League schedule. Right out of the gate, we’ve got favoritism.

That’s why the March Madness system is the best solution. All conference champions are included. That’s the most important step. Win your conference and you get a shot at the title. The power is entirely in each individual team’s hands and it’s 100% fair. If you can’t do that, you have no right to complain. You failed to secure your berth, and are now at the mercy of the at-large process, which in this case is a selection committee. If you want to make a case that the makeup of the committee is flawed, I would certainly listen and probably agree with you.

I would love to hear Bennett’s idea of a system for choosing at-large spots that would make everyone happy. But the truth is, no one wants to be left out, and it doesn’t really matter how you get left out or how many got in ahead of you. Expand the tournament to 96, 128, or 256 (Kinko’s has a deal on bracket binding) and you’ll still have someone fuming that their 20-loss team didn’t make it.

After our (my) self-imposed hiatus, I’m trying to get back into the posting groove. Here’s a delayed round-up of some of news and goings-on in Buckeyeland and Blogtopia.

This may only affect a small percentage of MotSaG readers, but earlier this week Gawker (which owns tabloid sports blog Deadspin) suffered a major security breach that included the usernames, emails and passwords to their thousands of user accounts being hacked. If you have ever commented or registered at any of their sites, including Deadspin, you might want to see if your account has been compromised and then set about changing any passwords you might have in common with Gawker sites and other sites you frequent. Practice cyber-security!

The Big Ten Logo and the Big Ten Divisions were announced to much derision and mockery by the fans. We here at MotSaG HQ hate the Leaders and Legends names and will refer to them as “East” and “West.” until something better comes along. (Which might happen sooner rather than later)

Speaking of things I hate (in conjunction with the new Big Ten announcements), I’m not a big fan of the new Big Ten Trophies. It was as if they didn’t want to offend anyone, so they spread as big a swath of recognition possible. Welcome to the Everyone gets a Trophy League! (don’t even get me started that Speil’s doesn’t get a trophy named after him. I think we need to start a blog-movement to get a Chris Speilman trophy).

Iowa – What’s going on over there?!

With ESPN’s stranglehold on the broadcast rights of the Bowl Games you can also now watch them all on your Xbox 360. Something felt wrong typing that last sentence.

Buckeye Ballers has the top 15 plays of former Buckeyes for the month of November.

I’m not sure how many MotSaG’ers are also Cleveland Indians fans, but we lost a true Cleveland hero this week with the passing of Bob Feller. Joe Posnanski (probably my favorite sports writer) has an excellent tribute to Feller.

Due to poor planning, the only prize this year is our undying respect and admiration. That counts for something, right?

I’d also like a little credit for not picking a single Final Four team. That takes a certain level of suckitude that most mortals struggle to attain. It comes to me quite easily.

In years past I’ve asked people to send me a request to join the fray, but that just ends up being extra work for both me and you (but mostly me). So this year I’ll include the league info here and whoever is interested in joining can do it straightway from here. So here are the details:

League: MotSaG Pick ‘Em 2010
PW: gobucks!

As always, if you don’t have the Buckeyes making it to at least the Sweet 16 (if not the Elite Eight) you’re better off elsewhere. Good Luck!

If you haven’t received an invite, or you’re interested in joining us this year, just drop us a note at motsag@gmail.com or send us a message through our contact page.

There will be a prize for the top bracket, but those details haven’t been finalized. Either way, enter early before the tournament starts!

Update – There’s only a couple more hours before the brackets are closed, so if you’re interested, get us your email ASAP.