How to Impress Your Friends While Watching College Basketball

There are certain general phrases, tag lines and jargon that you should utilize while watching the college basketball tournament. This not only allows you to better communicate your ideas, it also sounds impressive.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Newspaper
• Newspaper

1. Understand the bracket. See "How to Interpret the College Basketball Tournament Bracket," under Related eHows. Because asking things like, "When's the consolation round?" sound really, uh, stupid.

2. Make up your own names for the tournament, and pass them off as little-known trivia gems that you happened to glean through superior knowledge. For example, the Grand Bracket (GB, for short) or the Afterlife.

3. Don't sound silly and say things like "the last four." Use the proper terms. The Sweet Sixteen are the last 16 teams left in the tournament. The Elite Eight (sometimes the Great Eight) and Final Four follow.

4. Watch basketball as much as possible. Listen to the commentators' catch phrases and repeat them. Dick Vitale's "It's great, BAY-BEE!" never wears thin, despite what anyone says. But forget Marv Albert's "Tre-MEN-dous!" That just bites.

5. Have an opinion. Whether anyone agrees with you or not, it's still an opinion and it sounds like you have it for a good reason. Say, "For Pete's sake, they need to be dropping 'em from downtown. They don't have the speed to penetrate."

6. Know how to calculate the rating percentage index (RPI), and refer to it indiscriminately. (Again, see "How to Interpret the College Basketball Tournament Bracket.")

7. Have an argument ready for every team on the bubble: "Sure, Kent deserves a Mid-American bid for its stellar RPI, and Bowling Green is no slacker. But Toledo might surprise both of them with its current winning streak."

8. Yell "NO!" at the TV occasionally, even if it makes no sense at the time. Follow this with a look of disgust and shout, "For crying out LOUD!" The sudden change in your demeanor will cause your friends to peer at you with curiosity and awe. They'll think, "Hmm.... He sees something I don't. He's got the smarts real good."

Tips & Warnings

• Memorize the bracket the day of its release. Rattle it off at every opportunity.

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[argyle]

on 12/15/2008 I'm almost sure my friend follows all these tips while not having any idea what's going on...

on 11/22/2005 Duke (boo) over Arizona for the championship.

Michigan St. and Maryland lost in the Final Four.

on 11/22/2005 Pick and hype up as many underdogs as you can. You'll impress everyone when a few actually pull off the upset. And when most lose, simply accuse everyone else of making B-O-R-I-N-G picks.