Why 64 Is Enough.

In the midst of an incredible NCAA Tournament, there are still idiots out there who think the 64 (65) team tournament should be expanded to include as many as 128(!) teams. So I might be quite opinionated about this because I think the system is working pretty well as is. Have these guys been watching the tournament this year? It has been amazing and worth every second I have devoted to it over homework or any other trivial matter.

Two of expansions proponents, Jay Wright, head coach at Villanova and Jim Boeheim, head coach at Syracuse seem to think a bigger tournament is better. Maybe that's because they envision an easier path to glory than the current system? Both Villanova, a #2 seed, and Syracuse, a #1 and a favorite to win the whole dance, were knocked off by underdogs: #10 Saint Mary's beat 'Nova in second round after they struggled in a double-overtime victory over the #15 seed and 'Cuse lost in the Sweet Sixteen to #5 Butler.

There are many other reasons against expanding the field. For one, it would completely eliminate late season competitiveness down the stretch of schedules and into conference tournaments. In the current system, the teams on the bubble of making the tournament are the most exciting to watch; they scrap and battle at the end of the year trying to impress the selection committee enough to earn a bid. Take Michigan this year for example. We weren't even close to the bubble entering the Big-10 Conference Tournament. But, every conference tournament winner gets an automatic bid to the tournament; it was our last and only chance to make. So after dispatching Iowa in the first round we went against #7 nationally-ranked Ohio State and played inspired basketball giving them a run for there money and positioned ourselves to win until this happened. That hurt just linking that. Regardless of my pain, Michigan would never have played with the urgency that we did in that game if the tournament was 128 or even 96 teams because we would have already had a bid locked up. We would have had nothing to play for.

Additionally, who really wants to see the 128th or 96th best team in the nation, who are under-.500, play? Let alone get smacked by a far superior opponent. Giving high ranked teams byes into later rounds of a larger tournament is also stupid. The appeal of March Madness is watching even the best teams have to win night in and night out, which allows for the upsets and Cinderella runs to happen. Giving byes is like saying you don't like upsets because it directs delays the inevitable upsets until later. And if the NCAA even cares about athletes and their academics as they say they do, a larger tournament would keep student-athletes out of the classroom for even longer.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Individual News Story Brainstorming

I absolutely love food. I like talking about food, cooking, smelling, eating, whatever about it, I like it. With the amount I eat, I'm pretty lucky that I don't weigh 300 pounds. I thank my metabolism, parents, and active life for that. To give you an idea of what I eat, you need to understand my role in 'The Breakfast Club', a group of friends and I who visit various Ann Arbor breakfast establishments on the weekends typically around noon or 1 pm.

SO, after I clean my plate, usually before anyone else, I wait patiently at the table, drink my water, and eye the half-full plates of my colleagues. They all know what's coming. Sometimes I jump the gun and ask them if they are finished before they are, and I feel bad. But when they are finished, they shuffle their leftovers toward me, and I go to work (again). And usually again. I typically end with at least three empty plates stacked on top of one another by the end of breakfast. I acquired this skill from my dad who I now have to battle to call rights to my mom's plates at dinner. He calls it 'batting clean-up' or simply being the garbage disposal.

To return to the point of this post, as much as I love food, I also love the institution and phenomenon behind drunk food, especially at Michigan. There are so many choices: pizza, Mexican, sandwiches, more pizza, hot dogs, more Mexican, etc. And I have enjoyed all of them, multiple times. For my individual story, I am interested in doing a story primarily around Panchero's Mexican Grill, one my favorites from this group. It's probably a good problem to have, but there are many aspects to this story that I could take. For now, I want to combine aspects of a few of them. Fortunately, many of my friends also share my love for Panchero's.

Here snippets of stuff they said, remember they are my friends and these were small, informal conversations:

• Chris: "The tortilla is the best, that's the main reason. The way they distribute the sour cream as well, although they do it differently now. The packaging (aluminum foil) also retains heat very well. Also the free burrito after 10 (burrito card)." Chris is obviously an engineer commenting on the heat retention; he also has received his fair number of free burritos.
• Tom: "They mix the burritos, bro. You don't get uneven bites of meat and then rice; it's all even."
• Adam: "I like Francisco. Good staff and their tortillas."
• Pat: "Nice people, and they are patient with drunk people."
• Jordan: he first mentioned proximity but after I pointed out that it's right next to BTB, Jimmy John's, and Backroom, Jordan said, "The queso sauce is amazing. Other places don't even offer it. The tortilla is also good."
• Nate: he and I had an interesting conversation about Panchero's while drunk versus sober. Most of the others liked it while sober too but Nate said, "I don't like it as much sober, but it's soo good drunk."

These small quotes illustrate some interesting points about the restaurant, and I like how some aspects were repeated multiple times but others liked specific, unique parts of the burritos or experience.

Again, other angles to the story are endless. For one, I want to interview the staff/manager and get his opinion about why Panchero's has this almost cult following and how they deal with competition. I'm also curious about how the staff deals with the odd hours and very late nights, especially Thursday-Saturday.

Relating back to my Panera and McDonald's post, Panchero's is not the healthiest food out there. Especially coupled with a night of drinking hundreds of empty calories of alcohol, a burrito makes for a night that could easily eclipse 2,000 calories. Panchero's website doesn't provide nutritional facts but there are various sites that do, and they aren't so pretty. According to the first site, a plain chicken burrito has almost 900 calories and 24 grams of fat. Remember, that's without fat-filled cheese, queso sauce, sour cream, guacamole, etc.

As you can probably guess, I am pretty excited about doing this story.

Weird Allergy

So, I have an interesting allergy that decided to rear its ugly head at one of worst possible times of my life. I am allergic to liquor. In college.

One of the interesting aspects of my allergy is that it just developed during second semester last year. I was enjoying a screwdriver out of a half-gallon of orange juice while driving home from a Detroit Pistons game when...well, my friend was driving, but I was still enjoying the screwdriver nonetheless. So, I was starting to feel all warm and happy inside and talking more when my face started to feel hot. I brushed it off because this happens often when I drink.

After getting back from the game, we all walked into my fraternity house and my friend, knowledgeable about the 'Asian Glow' because he's Chinese, asked me what was wrong with my face. I replied that I didn't know, so I immediately went to the bathroom to look at the mirror. In the place of my normally fair complexion was a sea of red splotches on my face, forehead, and neck. I was pretty alarmed to say the least. So I stopped drinking my screwdriver, replacing it with water, and took some generic allergy medicine which I do occasionally when this happens.

The warm feeling in my face, and subsequent throbbing, soon decreased to normal levels. The discoloration and redness in my face, however, took longer to disappear and was gone within an hour probably. Other than those symptoms and the resulting embarrassment, I was fine. I didn't experience any swelling, hives, or difficulty breathing, thankfully. Needless to say, the whole reaction caught me off guard, and I was pretty confused. I think it happened once more last spring, and then not again until last summer/early fall.

The first few times I experienced the reaction, I was drinking vodka. Naturally, I thought I had an allergy to vodka, which was weird in itself because the faithful screwdriver on the way home from the Pistons game was not the first time I drank vodka. But, as many are already aware, allergies can develop later in life. To make the situation even more strange, this year I started experiencing the reaction to other types of liquor like rum, whiskey, and most recently, tequila. Most times it happens when I'm drinking mixed drinks.

My allergy also doesn't take the form of traditional symptoms. Instead of a more even spread of redness like a flushing reaction, mine is much more blotchy or spotty like I explained earlier. Lastly, the thing that always throws me for a loop is the inconsistency of how often and when the reaction happens. For instance, it didn't happen on my 21st birthday this past fall, and I did not drink a single beer the whole night, strictly drinking liquor. It also doesn't happen on random nights when I have small quantities of many different types of liquor, which I think points to the fact that it typically occurs when I'm drinking high quantities of the same type and brand of liquor.

If you're shaking your head after reading that, you're probably just as confused as I am. Go figure.