This latter metaphor, with its impossible-to-predict outcomes and upsets, is supposed to define the NCAA's March basketball tournament. So obsessed are we by the "madness" of possible upsets and Cinderella stories that bracketology is now a national gambling ritual conducted in most workplaces, from the White House on down.

But what if March Madness is celebrating something that shouldn't be celebrated? What if the rags-to-riches, up-from-the-bootstraps metaphor that makes the tournament so appealing is the wrong one? What if, instead, the NCAA tournament is really a metaphor for something darker, more sinister and more disturbing about our society?

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Yes, that's right -- NCAA basketball is a $780 million-a year business that makes 1 percenters out of NCAA executives, coaches, athletic directors and college administrators. Yet that same business offers relative scraps to the players who actually generate that money.

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God forbid he pick a sleeper like UNLV (3) or Michigan (4). "I'm going with Louisville," the president told ESPN's Andy Katz. "I know it's not a surprise pick. And I'm going with Indiana. I think this is Indiana's year."

It's always a number one seed's year with the president. Since Obama began publicly filling out the tournament bracket in 2009, he has been almost constitutionally incapable of choosing against the chalk. His Final Four and championship picks over the past five years have gone as follows (correct picks in bold):

2009: Final Four (Louisville (1), Pittsburgh (1), North Carolina(1), Memphis (2)), champion (North Carolina (1))

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“I stopped playing at 16," he said, "when I realized others can run and I can make money.”

In the status- and wealth-obsessed post-Soviet world, being a billionaire businessman holds far more cachet then being an athlete. Which is why Mikeladze joined forces with Jamlet Khukhashvili, a man he half-jokingly refers to as “the godfather.” They are an odd pair, the jaded boy genius and the smooth-talking Jewish salesman. But then, Georgia and basketball is a strange combo.

Georgia is known for producing many things -- conflicts, wine, Joseph Stalin – but not professional basketball players. Yet inside this little nation in the turbulent Caucasus, sports fans can rattle off the names of all five native Georgians who have played in the NBA: Zaza Pachulia, Tornike Shengelia, Vladimir Stepania, Viktor Sanikidze and Nikoloz Tskitishvili. They tend to leave out that Sanikidze never actually signed a contract. It is easier to skip to Giorgi Shermadini, Manuchar Markoishvili and Viktor Sanikidze, all of whom play in the prestigious Euroleague.

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In just his first game after his ogling of Katherine Webb -- the girlfriend of Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron -- during college football's national championship game made national headlines, late-night monologues and forced an apology from his ESPN bosses, Musburger signed off from a college basketball game last night by calling his female sideline reporter "really smokin'."

Here's how he ended his call of the Kansas/Baylor game last night:

"Once again, your final score, Kansas 61, Baylor 44. "Coming up next, SportsCenter. For Fran Franschilla and Holly Rowe, who was really smokin' tonight, I want to say 'So long from Lawrence.'"

Check out the call in the video below, and watch the emphasis the 73-year-old broadcaster places on "really smokin'."

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The school released the notice of allegation letter Friday following a 15-month investigation into the recruiting of former player Nate Miles. The eight alleged violations include improper phone calls and text messages to recruits, giving recruits improper benefits and improperly distributing free tickets to high school coaches and others. Coach Jim Calhoun was cited for failing to promote an atmosphere of compliance.

"It's not exactly, certainly anywhere near the high point of my career, as a matter of fact it's certainly one of the lowest points at any time that you are accused of doing something," said Calhoun, who has led the Huskies since 1986 and twice guided them to national championships. "It's a very serious matter."

UConn is to appear before the governing body on Oct. 15 to respond. Attorney Rick Evrard, an outside counsel who advises UConn on NCAA-related matters, said the school likely will spend the next three months reviewing the allegations. He said if the school confirms them, it is obligated to impose its own sanctions. Penalties could vary widely, depending on what UConn finds in its review.

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And ruin, sadly enough, is the near-certain fate of what for a quarter-century has stood as one of the sports world’s last pillars of unspoiled perfection: the NCAA basketball tournament. As this year’s edition of March Madness climaxes in Indianapolis, it has become clear that the NCAA will junk the current tournament format and expand to a 96-team field starting next season.

A few days ago, the NCAA released a blueprint for its beefed-up bracket, laughably claiming that it was all theoretical and that no decisions had yet been made. Don’t be fooled. It was only the latest step in a tightly scripted rollout that began a year ago. Soon, the NCAA will sever its tournament contract with CBS and ratify the new postseason format. Then the bidding will begin.

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President Barack Obama predicts Kansas and Kansas State to reach the men's basketball Final Four this season, along with Kentucky and Villanova.

He's picking the Jayhawks to defeat Kentucky for the title.

Obama filled out a bracket for ESPN for the second straight year Wednesday, along with one for the women's tournament. He selected Connecticut, Notre Dame, Stanford and Tennessee to reach the Final Four in that tournament.

Last year, Obama correctly picked North Carolina to win the national championship. His bracket ranked 903,125th overall, just above the 80th percentile in the ESPN's online contest.

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Not much in the way of upsets so far. I refuse to consider a 9-over-8 an upset, so Texas A&M over BYU doesn't count. Tenth-seed Maryland beat No. 7 Cal, which is officially an upset but didn't much look like one, and 10-over-7 usually isn't really one anyway.

I can drag out my well-worn theory here that a difference of three or four seeds in the middle of the bracket, a 7 vs. a 10 or an 8 vs. a 12, that sort of thing, is nothing. It has more to do with the biases of the Selection Committee and the small sample size of a season than the actual quality of the teams.

But I'm not going to do that.

The evening games offer some upset chances. A lot of people have Western Kentucky over Illinois in the South as their token 12-over-5 upset, and a few have No. 13 Akron, also in the South, over No. 4 Gonzaga.

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But for most of 2008, living through it, even as housing prices fell and the recession gathered, the sports year didn't feel like the Year of the Crash. Most of 2008 seemed to be about big sports stories actually living up to their hype.

It started with the New England Patriots chasing an undefeated season. They'd ended 2007 by winning an epic regular-season finale over the New York Giants, and a month later lined up as heavy favorites in the Super Bowl against the same team. Giants quarterback Eli Manning engineered a late touchdown drive that gave New York a stunning victory.

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Faced with the NBA rule that rookies must be 19 years old and a year removed from high school, Jennings is thinking about playing pro ball in Europe next season.

Jennings is an 18-year-old Angeleno who has been going to the basketball factory Oak Hill Academy in Virginia for two years. He's considering attending the University of Arizona if his test scores are good enough, but even if they're up to snuff, he says he might go to Europe. He sounds very mature and smart as he explains his thinking on the matter, which he traces to the day he heard youth basketball guru and former shoe executive Sonny Vaccaro talking about overseas ball on the radio.

"I think people just develop better over there," Rhoden quotes Jennings saying. "You're playing professional ball for a year, you're playing against guys who are older than you. I'll constantly be playing basketball 24-7. I don't have to worry about school and things like that."

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USA Today quotes ESPN's star college hoops analyst as he turns all kinds of colors over reports that USC freshman phenom O.J. Mayo -- I hope you're sitting down, because this is shocking -- accepted cash and other gifts for three years as a high schooler and in his one season at Southern Cal.

Those gifts would be against the rules of both high school athletics and the NCAA, of course. Mayo has announced he'll skip his sophomore season, not to mention the second semester of his freshman year, to enter the NBA draft.

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The APR program tracks each team's performance at keeping athletes in school and academically eligible as well as its graduation rate. The idea is that if you're going to field a team of jocks who never go near a classroom, you're going to get dinged by the APR, whose penalties are ultimately as serious as those for NCAA rules violations.

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The ads usually have moody shots of athletes in action, then end up with the same athletes in work clothes.

This year's crop has injected some laughs. They're up to the high standards of the campaign. They're funny. But the very nature of the central joke in them highlights what a bogus idea it is that forms the foundation of the NCAA. I and others call it the Big Lie, that big-time college sports are purely amateur, mere extracurricular activities, and the athletes who play them are students just like any others on campus.

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Wonderful system the NCAA has going here.

Hoosiers men's basketball coach Kelvin Sampson stepped down Friday amid a scandal involving illegal phone calls to recruits. What a coincidence: That's the very violation he was on probation for having committed at Oklahoma when Indiana hired him. What are the odds he'd -- allegedly -- do the same thing again? And then lie about it to university and NCAA investigators.

Sampson took a $750,000 buyout, equal to a year and a half's salary. That let the university put a quick end to the matter of his continued employment while protecting itself from the kind of unlawful-termination lawsuit that universities have been losing lately. Sampson also agreed to cooperate with any investigations and not to interfere with the team.

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Later that New Year's Day at the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., Boise State beat Oklahoma 43-42 in overtime. The ridiculously thrilling upset -- which featured three touchdowns in the last 86 seconds, a hook-and-ladder play and, on the game-winning two-point conversion, a Statue of Liberty play -- was one of the greatest college football games ever played.

So it goes? Good with the bad. Cycle of life. A rainbow for every storm-cloud and a birth for every death.

If only.

How many great games and thrilling moments would have been needed to make up for all of 2007's tragedies? More than any year can provide. There were some nice moments in 2007, but it was a year of death and a steady rain of scandal.

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It would have been the Game of the Season most seasons, though this year it doesn't have quite the same pregame buildup as the Week 9 Game of the Century between the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts, both undefeated at the time.

The big difference between that game and this one is that just about everyone in the United States could watch that one from their living room couch. Only people in greater Cleveland or Houston or without working televisions were shut out.

This time around, people who want to watch the game and who live in the 75 million or so households without the NFL Network are going to have to find their way to sports bars or pretend they like their neighbors who have it.

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