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There seem to be a lot of college basketball experts out there. Like leprechauns, they appear from nowhere every March before rehibernating en masse closer to April. Perhaps you’ve met them. They run up to you, bragging on how they picked 12th-seeded Western Kentucky to beat No. 5 Illinois, yet had no idea 13th-seeded Cleveland State beat Syracuse at the Carrier Dome earlier this season and somehow missed the Vikings upset over No. 4 Wake Forrest.

Ask them about that sometime.

Ask them when the last time all 12 ones, twos and threes survived to make the Sweet 16, how often four number ones reached the Final Four, or which original member of Michigan’s Fab Five is still persona non grata in Ann Arbor.

Well, you don’t have to because it doesn’t matter. If you can print, you can win a bracket. It doesn’t matter if you know John Wooden won ten titles, or that Bobby Knight has the most wins in men’s hoops. College basketball, like football, is made so easy, even the office secretary can win the (shhh!) office pool. You don’t even have to watch. Just take the teams with the low numbers and hope for the best.

Once you start thinking, or even knowing what you’re doing, you lose.

The only time you need to know anything is when you open your mouth. So how about those “Cinderella” Arizona Wildcats, huh?

Meanwhile, basketball gets credit for having the playoff tournament that college football lacks. However, most overlook the thing that college football has that college hoops will never sustain; the thing its tournament kills:

A regular season worth watching.

* Here’s the final solution to fix the World Baseball Classic once and for all. Put it on ESPN Classic and keep it there. As in mothballs. As in the eternal resting place for the USFL, SportsCentury and the Washington Senators.

Baseball’s season is too important, its records are too precious, its arms are too brittle, its investments are too expensive and its seasons are too long to add meaningless games that supposedly count in March, or compete with the NFL and college football in November.

Many have pointed to the NHL suspending its season for the Olympics. That’s brilliant for a league that desperately needs national attention. Of course people will watch the Olympics because the Olympics find you. Nobody cared about Team USA hockey winning the gold, let alone beating the Soviets in 1980 until IT HAPPENED. Now everybody somehow remembers where they were and the politics of the day.

The NHL still uses that team’s free publicity to give Americans a reason to watch a game they normally don’t. Hockey NEEDS the Olympics.

Baseball doesn’t need the WBC. Frankly, the WBC hurts the game more than it helps. Team USA became a MASH unit while baseball is a game of series of teams playing at their best. Ones-and-dones, double-eliminations, pool play, mandatory pitch counts and women’s softball baserunning rules are as foreign to baseball as the concept of an olympic-style playoff to determine the best baseball country in the world. Japan and Korea don’t really have the best players the world has to offer, or else the majority of them would be Asian.

When the best American and Canadian pitchers don’t even sign up to play, it doesn’t count. Perhaps when the Roman Empire reunites against us, or the Chinese, and threaten our freedom, and, oh yeah, play baseball better than we do, then maybe we can ressurrect this “classic.” And perhaps Rocky will come out of retirement for a seventh movie.

Let’s hope we get neither.

* Speaking of A-Rod, The New York Daily News reports the admitted steroid-user also used the same “escort” service as our former governor, Elliot Spitzer, and even had a connection with the madam. Before you cast stones at today’s athletes, beware of another famous slugger, whom everyone still loves, yet who also enjoyed hookers:

Babe Ruth.

Athletes don’t choose to be role models. And they all make both good choices and bad choices.

However, you DO choose how to influence your kids on how they choose theirs.

* Reports have surfaced that Rogers Cable is polling Canadians on their interest in the company hosting an additional Buffalo Bills regular season game in 2010, ‘11 and ‘12. The Bills have said there have been no agreements to play more than one regular season game in Canada for each of the next four years.

If the Bills lack of free agent activity says anything (aside from the bargain-basement signing of Terrell Owens which speaks for the rest of the league’s “interest” in T.O.), it shows the team is gearing for slowed ticket sales from a rough economy, aside from a ninth straight season without a playoff appearance.

The Bills reportedly make over $70 million from their five-year Toronto series. If they can generate more to keep the franchise viable in western New York, while making season tickets cheaper for fans in Buffalo, fine.

Now is not the time to worry about the Bills leaving Buffalo. Without being disrespectful, when that time comes, you’ll know it.

Want something to worry about? How about the possibility of the Bills visiting the New England Patriots in Week One on Monday Night Football?

Haven’t you suffered enough?

11:44pm Shannon   BAM

11:44pm Brian   HAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I’m feeling lucky.

BALLS!

I have no idea how to do shit like that!

11:45pm Shannon   haha i smudged the bottom balls

might fix that

11:45pm Brian   what do you mean?

11:46pm Shannon   it looks blurry

11:46pm Brian   Well, it does not have to be a work of art- look at the content!

11:46pm Shannon   haha im glad you like it

11:46pm Brian   About balls!

HAHAHA

balls solutions!

Advanced BALLS

11:47pm Shannon   hahaha alright i can tweak it

11:48pm Brian   no it’s perfect

Privacy balls

balls privacy

balls preferences

balls tools

11:49pm Shannon   dont get carried away

11:49pm Brian   advertising balls

11:49pm Shannon   something might burst

11:49pm Brian   I’m feeling Balls

ha ha ha h

Feeling!

11:49pm Shannon   im laughing out loud- why?

11:49pm Brian   BALLS BALLS

hahahahahaha

11:49pm Shannon   haahahai dont even approve of that low humor

balls.com however

11:50pmBrian   ohh shit- must copy this text exchange for the BLOG

11:50pm Shannon   yes!

11:50pm Brian   I’m feelings balls

11:50pm Shannon   hell yes

11:50pm Brian   HAAAAA 

Yes, it’s Tuesday morning. It’s still March, it’s still cold, and you still live in western New York. And no, it’s not a dream, nor a nightmare depending on your perspective.

Stop pinching yourself. Terrell Owens really is a Buffalo Bill. The same Terrell Owens who put a signature on a touchdown pass with a Sharpie lodged in his sock, torched the San Francisco tenures of Jeff Garcia and Steve Mariucci, refused a trade to Baltimore, did a sketch in the visiting locker room with a towel-dropping Nicollette Sheridan (“Desperate Housewives”), and ripped Donovan McNabb. The same Terrell Owens whose pain pills got mixed with his supplements, who rode a bike with a Lance Armstrong jersey during training camp while driving Bill Parcells into the front office and reportedly accused Tony Romo and Jason Whitten of play-calling him out of the offense.

Yet, this is the same Terrell Owens who tearfully defended Tony Romo’s trip to Mexico during a playoff bye week after losing a playoff game to the New York Giants. The same Terrell Owens whose nine catches for 122 yards carried the Philadelphia Eagles during Super Bowl XXXIX while his quarterback, McNabb, single-handedly sabotaged his offense’s final drives. The same Terrell Owens who caught ten touchdowns last year–at 35 years old–while his new teammates caught 14 TD passes COMBINED. The same Terrell Owens who’s bringing his Hall-of-Fame credentials which include 951 catches for over 14,000 career receiving yards, 139 TDs, his VH1 reality show, Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football, and every major sports network to both 3690 East Avenue in Pittsford and One Bills Drive in Orchard Park.

Forget saying Terrell Owens is the biggest signing in Buffalo Bills history since Drew Bledsoe. He’s their biggest signing ever. In April of 2002, Bledsoe may have gotten the hero’s welcome, but come minicamp, T.O. is bringing the parade, and his big blue Dallas star with him.

That star may as well replace that dot marking Buffalo on your GPS. Terrell Owens is bigger than both Buffalo and the Bills right now, and will attract more traffic to western New York than Niagara Falls.

Any Bills fan who thinks this is a bad move clearly needs to think a little less. There’s little risk here with a bargain price of $6.5 million. Until the weekend, the Bills had ten straight off-seasons of unfulfilled promises of high draft picks and free agents. Even if Owens causes the problems that nay-saying pundits say they think he will, the Bills still have a better shot of January football WITH him than WITHOUT him.

And, they’ll sell more tickets, suites, Toronto packages, gear, jerseys, and of course, hope WITH him than WITHOUT him.

Not only should Bills fans be doing back flips, the players need to get on the Owens bandwagon themselves. Marshawn Lynch should be the first after his second offseason incident with the law and his first possible suspension as a repeat offender. Not only should wideout James Hardy offer his No. 81 to Owens, but Lynch should offer his No. 23 just to thank T.O. for diverting attention from him come minicamp time. Ko Simpson may as well write him a thank you card himself. If there’s any player who can play the “do you know who I am?” card, it’s the guy who needs no intro, rather than a little-known defensive back now with an arrest under his belt.

Meanwhile, for a guy like Owens who supposedly brings so much baggage, he seemed quite reserved at Saturday’s press conference, perhaps even humbled. The guy is coming to Buffalo with something to prove to those supposed contenders who snubbed him–the biggest free agent of this offseason–to play with a bunch of guys who haven’t proved anything in their careers (save Kawika Mitchell). Owens’ press conference sounded more like Doug Flutie’s rather than the boorish introductions of Reggie Jackson, or Rickey Henderson. It could have looked like a shotgun wedding at City Hall, as shocking as it was symbolic. Yet it ended with smiles and laughs, forging a symbiotic alliance nonetheless.

The Buffalo Bills are clearly in a battle to save their franchise. Period. Terrell Owens is battling for one last big contract, and his chance at a Super Bowl ring. This time, the Bills, who haven’t been good in nearly a decade, got lucky instead. No stroke of genius here, unless you count Owens overcoming his “North America” bobble only to turn his words calling the Bills “North America’s Team.” Hmm. Where were the “marketing geniuses” last year on that one?

Leave it to T.O. to not only give the Bills a cover for their 2009 media guide, but a campaign slogan to boot. Come to think of it, you can’t even spell North America without T.O. (There, fellas. A freebie.)

This move doesn’t necessarily make the Bills a playoff team. But it can’t hurt, regardless of the proverbial circus that may ensue and its 10-city fall tour.

Like Bruce Springsteen sings, “at the end of every hard day, people find some reason to believe.”

T.O. has six-and-a-half million reasons now, and potentially millions more in 2010, to believe he can prove 31 other NFL teams were wrong. Terrell Owens is the biggest reason Bills fans have had to get their popcorn ready since the Jim Kelly days.

And the Bills front office had every reason to ask, “What the heck?”