March Madness On Demand

March Madness is catching on... In Vegas, the first weekend where 48 games are played are now the second busiest weekend next to the Superbowl. This year, CBS & the NCAA began to stream the games in real-time via their MMOD website which broke online viewing records according to the G&M.

It took me an hour to get in on Thursday, even with my supposed VIP access, but I think once the network issues were sorted out, I was able to keep up with all the games. Video quality is decent using a ~360 kbit/s video feed, but there is a little bit of lag so I advised against checking the realtime scoreboard. I think CBS realized that a portion of their audience would be using MMOD from work, so they even built in a "Boss Button" that would hide the webcast and display what looks like an excel spreadsheet instead.

March Madness

Hi y'all, it's that time of year again... For the seventh running of my annual basketball pool, so check it out here.

From March 16th to April 3th, 65 U.S. Division I College Men's Basketball teams will get a 'Chance to Dance' in the NCAA Tournament. The teams are divided into four regions and are seeded from 1 to 16. This is a one-knockout tournament, so one loss and the team's season is done like dinner. It takes six straight wins to get the honour of cutting down the twine in Indianapolis and be crowned as tourney champs.

This contest is a bit different to other NCAA pools where you'd usually pick the winners of each game (aka bracket-based). Instead, you choose the ten teams that you will think will do the best in this year's tournament. Points are awarded for each of your teams depending on their seed and the number of games they win.

So pick your squads and follow how you do over the next three weekends! Entries are due this Thursday at 10am MT, so just go onto the website to submit your entry. There's no cost to enter and the winner gets bragging rights until next March. We had sixteen entries last year, so we're always looking for more. This year, I've updated the entry form, so it'll be easier to put in your picks and you'll get an email confirmation once your entry has been validated.