"BEIJING a€" After months of speculation about how Olympic athletes would react to the air quality problems here, some answers arrived at the airport Tuesday when four track cyclists on the United States Olympic team stepped off their flight wearing masks over their mouths and noses."

Having lived in Indiana most of my life, this one is close to my heart. I mean sure, the guy's not about to be drafted into the NBA or anything, but when was the last time you saw a president (or even a candidate) be good enough on the court to not embarrass himself? (no fair saying Bill Bradley - he was a 10-year pro for chrissakes).

This is a video clip put together by ESPN - I think it was around the time he retired a couple years back.

Please bear with me - I need moral support while my team is about to miss the playoffs for the second year in a row...

Man oh man. Before the outcome of the Kansas/Davidson game was determined, my ESPN bracket was in the 99.7 percentile range. With all the top seeds now officially in the Final Four, I'm still at 98.1 percent.

Oh yeah, and I spent a total of about 15 minutes filling it out. How did it happen? I just followed a few simple rules.

1. Start with conventional wisdom.

ESPN lets you pre-popluate your bracket with predictions from some of their top NCAA experts. I used these as a starting point in order to get a frame of reference, and as a way from keeping my picks from getting too out-of-hand.

2. Pick a few early-round upsets, but not in a way that blows up your bracket.

You have to go out on a limb and pick a few upsets in order to differentiate yourself from the pack. But keep them fairly reasonable, and limit your Sweet 16 surprises to just a few, so that you're not screwed for the entire tournament when you're wrong.

In my case I had the fortunate pick of West Virginia over Duke (not a shocker - Duke was overseeded this year), and just plain lucked out with Western Kentucky (Go Hilltoppers!) - I had a hunch UConn would lose fairly early, and I was right.

3. Hedge your bets in the middle rounds.

The further you get in the tournament, the more each pick counts point-wise. So try not to get TOO cute once you get past the Sweet 16. I never would have predicted FOUR number 1 seeds in the Final Four this year, but the field did seem a bit lopsided this time around - UNC and UCLA just seemed like locks, for example.

I actually picked Wisconsin over Kansas to get into the Final Four mainly because I figured one of the top seeds had to lose. In fact if Davidson had managed to pull an upset today my ranking would probably be 99.999999 percent, since all of the Kansas folks would have been knocked out. Oh well...

4. Cross your fingers and hope for the best!

At this point it's probably going to be hard for me to move up much further in the rankings, since no Final Four scenario from here on out can be TOO far-fetched - everybody's a number 1 seed now, after all.

Having UNC win it all at this point probably is a pretty common pick. Having them do it against Memphis (rather than UCLA) might differentiate this somewhat.

We'll see what happens from here on out. UNC over Memphis 89-84 baby!

Yikes. As a Pacers fan of 20 or so years, this is NOT good news. It's not that Walsh is leaving.. it's that Bird is staying. Larry Bird has done nothing whatsoever to inspire confidence in Pacers fans since he came into the front office in 2003.

And with the team in its mediocre state, with bad contracts to boot (O'Neal and Troy Murphy), this does not bode well for the blue and gold.

Barack Obama posted his NCAA Tournament bracket picks online. Most of the picks look pretty safe; six of Obama's Elite Eight are 1 and 2 seeds.

One interesting difference... Pittsburgh in the Final Four, hehe. Not an amazing stretch I guess, but he'll be lucky if he's right - the Final Four takes place about a week before the Pennsylvania primary...

A new and promising "alternate reality game" has been launched as a campaign related to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Even if these sorts of games aren't generally your thing, this one seems to be "for real." Check out the trailer below and check out (www.findthelostring.com) for a more involved intro.

A player's wiki (http://olympics.wikibruce.com/Beginners_Guide) has been set up to track progress of the "game" and provide helpful details for beginners; there's also more info available at www.argn.com.

Pretty sweet.