TWTW's 2017 March Madness Preview

Danville, Kentucky -- It's that time of year again, folks. The time of year where kids leave it all on the court. The time of year when boys become men. The time of year where my panicked wife frantically calls the police for information about my whereabouts after my phone dies while watching basketball at Buffalo Wild Wings for days at a time. It's March Madness time, folks.

Unlike Rachel Maddow, I won't waste your time with a twenty-minute buildup culminating in nothing. I'll cut right to the chase. Here are the games to watch during the first round of this year's tournament:

Maryland (6) versus Xavier (11)

Folks, I'll be upfront that I have a slight bias for the Musketeers, a scrappy team hailing from Cincinnati. But this game has huge upset potential. This Maryland team is soft; softer than the mushy interior concealed within every terrapin's protective shell. This is to be expected from Maryland, a soft state. I once spent a night at the Caroline County Department of Corrections for using non-standard crabbing technology in violation of state regulations. Maryland's crabbing scene isn't the only thing that's overrated: their basketball team has had some bad letdown losses to the likes of Penn State and Nebraska. The Musketeers will get it done.

Michigan (7) versus Oklahoma State (10)

This is another intriguing can't miss game. Brad Underwood is one of the most underrated coaches in the country. Michigan, on the other hand, is the school that passed on the blue collar fierceness of Rick Pitino en route to irrelevance for most of the 2000s. Stillwater is a much tougher town than Ann Arbor. Take the upset, folks.

Cincinnati (6) versus Kansas State (11)

I'm taking K-State here folks. Don't get me wrong - I'm a Cincy man through and through; the city that brought us Pete Rose, the best chili on the planet, and Neil H. McElroy, the Defense Secretary under President Eisenhower. But K-State has so much momentum after falling just a point short of winning the Big 12 tournament when nobody expected them to. Don't best against momentum, folks.

Dayton (7) versus Wichita State (10)

This is the crowned jewel of first round match-ups during this year's tournament, featuring two of my favorite teams. Wichita State and Dayton are teams that love to beat Ohio State; both of them handed the Buckeyes shocking Ls in 2013 and 2014 respectively. I have nothing but respect for Dayton; it's a great area, with one of the best Taco Bell restaurants I've ever been to - this place was clean as a whistle. But pick the underdog here, folks. Not that Wichita should be underdogs; they've been criminally under-seeded by the crooked NCAA elites that want to lock out small schools from the competition. The Shockers are a team that could run the table at this tournament.

Teams to Watch:

West Virginia: The Mountaineers are a team on the upswing, fresh off of an excellent Big 12 tournament where the 'experts' thought a Kansas Jayhawks victory was a fait accompli. This team plays with such tenacity, using the full court press for entire game to grind down the willpower of their opponents. I think this is the year they make a deep run. They say the Appalachian mountains are alive with the sound of coal mining once more, folks. They're bringing home some hardware this March too.

Purdue: Purdue is another blue collar team that is going to turn some heads. This is the school run by Mitch Daniels; former Republican governor of Indiana who handed over control of the state to our current Vice President, Mike Pence. The Boilermakers are not to be trifled with.

Harbaugh vs. Urban Meyer Part II: Head-to-Head Wins Matter

Danville, Kentucky -- Once upon a time, when a man beat a man, he beat a man. Achieving victory --- whether it took place in the bowling alley, the ballot box, the football field, or the baseball diamond --- used to designate the superiority of one competitor over the other.

Once upon a time, I used to regularly whoop my brother-in-law at golf. I'm not much of a golfer; I've never been the type to hang around country clubs or obsess over the PGA championship. Yet, when I would play golf with my accursed brother-in-law as a gesture of goodwill towards my sister, my golf skills felt transcendent. Maybe it was the burning resentment; maybe it was my boiling blood; maybe it was the Fireball I'd pregame with. My putts were immaculate and I would drive the ball across the field with majestic precision. The defeats were so humiliating for my poor brother-in-law that he became too embarrassed to show his face around the greens. With each consecutive loss that I handed him, my dominance over him became clearer and clearer. 

These days, winning is not considered winning. Though Donald Trump prevailed over Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, Clinton's supporters refuse to concede and instead demand that the election be audited. NCAA football rankings are similarly indecisive, failing to reward victories and punish defeats. If only the NCAA football rankings appreciated the unambiguous glory of a head-to-head win. College football is broken. Most polls and rankings are too reliant on murky metrics like "strength of schedule" and "quality wins and losses," downplaying the importance of mano-e-mano triumphs over rivals.

Luckily there is one game this rivalry weekend where winning the head-to-head match-up will mean something. That game is perhaps the greatest rivalry of all: Michigan vs. Ohio State, the second confrontation between Jim Harbaugh and Urban Meyer. Folks, there is so much on the line. Harbaugh is fighting to prove Michigan's renaissance is real, and that his Wolverines can hang with the big boys. The milk-drinking, steak-eating Harbaugh is a throwback to the classy days of Bo Schembechler. Urban Meyer is a throwback to mercenaries like King George III's Hessian hired guns. The stakes could not be higher.

The Wolverines-Buckeyes showdown will not only be fought for vengeance over the Toledo Border War of 1935: it will determine the competitors in the Big 10 title game. If Ohio State beats Michigan and Pennsylvania State beats Michigan State, OSU and Penn State will vie for Big 10 supremacy and a playoff berth.

Yet, if Michigan beats Ohio State, there is no guarantee Pennsylvania State will get to vie for the Big 10 title and a playoff spot, in spite of Penn State's stunning 24-21 victory over the #2 ranked Buckeyes earlier this year. Folks, that's a grotesque miscarriage of justice. Does Penn State's head-to-head victory over the Buckeyes mean nothing?

Unfortunately, this injustice is all too common in college football. Look at the travesty that befell the Baylor Bears in 2014: in their head-to-head regular season match-up, Baylor beat TCU 61-58. And what a victory it was, folks. Baylor was down 21 with 9:30 left. Baylor, through sheer force of will, scored 24 points in those last 9 minutes and thirty seconds to pull a stunning victory from the jaws of defeat. Both Baylor and TCU finished 11-1. TCU's only loss was to Baylor. Some nerds said TCU should be ranked higher than Baylor despite losing the head-to-head match-up. These folks could not be more wrong. 

Look, nerds. I have no horse in this race, even though I'm from Kentucky, where people race horses a lot. I don't have a college degree and thus have no strong affiliations to any particular college team. I just want to see the right champion crowned. Advanced stats don't crown our champions. Winning does. In any sport, it is exceedingly rare that the consensus best team becomes the eventual champion. Winning is the only metric we care about: that's why we have a playoff instead of declaring the team with the best adjusted efficiency margin the winner beforehand.

A few pieces of advice for all college football rankers, voters, and pollsters: stop sleeping on Western Michigan, an undefeated team with a compelling case to be the #2 team behind Alabama. 

the one true #1 seed is on ESPN 2 right now. Liberal media sleeping on undefeated #WesternMichigan like they slept on '13-'14 Shocker bball. pic.twitter.com/BFRVVKQlbE

— The Will To Win (@TWTWsports) November 25, 2016

Here's some more advice: if two teams are directly vying for a playoff spot, the head-to-head win should be the tiebreaker, not some nebulous and arbitrary standard like "strength of schedule." It's time to go back to that "once upon a time" where winning mano-e-mano meant something. It's time to make wins matter again.