Fan Girl (Second Half)

You might be obsessed with the NCAA tournament if:

You remember being your son's age and weeping openly over the outcome of a game featuring teams from two colleges that your parents never attended, and that you would never attend, either.

You stayed on your college campus over Spring Break because March Madness was coming to town.  (This was before you got involved in pools, which means that for the most part you were able to just chill in the stands and root for a series of "good games," with no dog in the fight.)

Your children don't really bother trying to engage you in conversation the week of the tourney.

You once attempted to foster interest in the tournament among said children by creating a bingo game featuring common phrases like "bubble team," "road warriors," "cupcake schedule" and other clichés like "player on the bench with towel obscuring his face" and "cheerleader with single tear smearing temporary tattoo on cheek."

You miss Dick Vitale but consider Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith an acceptable consolation prize (because you grew up in H-Town, AND IT'S LIKE THEY'RE GETTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER!).

You start a conference call during tourney week by thanking the (all-male) participants for dialing in and temporarily diverting their attention from the CBS or Turner station of their respective choices.

You are incredulous when one of said male participants does not understand the comment.  ("Um, CBS, TBS, TNT, truTV?  It's, like, March?")

You correct people when they refer to the 64-team round as the "first" round.  (Technically, play-ins are round 1, distinct from the round of 64, which is round 2.)

You debate the relative merits of the nicknames "Elite Eight" (ALLITERATIVE!) and "Great Eight" (RHYMING!).

You think that, just possibly, you have the eerie power to control young men's minds through your television - like, when SFA's Thomas Walkup missed one of his free throws, allowing VCU the opportunity to win with a three-pointer and avoid overtime, and (in your outside voice, directed to the TV) you instructed (1) VCU's player to miss his shot by a certain distance and (2) the Jacks to get the rebound and run out the clock.  WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT TRANSPIRED.  (Why did you pick SFA, a twelve-seed, over a five-seed?  Because they are from Texas, and so are you?  NO.  Because you knew that they were entering the tournament riding the momentum of the nation's second-longest winning streak.  Duh.  It was a safe and entirely rational bet.)

You devote three consecutive blog posts to your obsession with "the rock."