March 16, 2023 News and Notes

• I'm not doing brackets this year.  Not protest of anything (Alabama plays about noon today PDT) -- I had already basically decided I wouldn't, owing to what would otherwise be a wide-open tournament, more so than usual.
• With about 12 hours to tipoff, ESPN reports Alabama has about 1 in 5 brackets with them as the champions.  Houston is next, about 1 in 6.
• The Grand Canyon team had a mishap -- their travel supplies never made it to Denver.  They may end up playing in road Baylor uniforms.
• FOX Sports stepping in it again -- pre-empted the final inning of the Puerto Rico-Dominican Republic World Baseball Classic game for the United States-Colombia game.
• And the nickname works:  The winning celebration for Puerto Rico's elimination of a highly touted Dominican Republican team has claimed an injury for Edwin...  excuse me...  Edlose Diaz!
• Quinten Dormady has been reinstated to play in the XFL, an outside law firm finding no cause of impropriety.  But it does appear that The Rock and others want to take it more seriously than the NFL would -- as I said above, the XFL hired an outside law firm to investigate the claims Dormady gave pages from the playbook to another team.
• Two of the big stories of the March sumo tournament are going by the boards quickly:  Takakeisho's Yokozuna attempt is nearly failed already after splitting his first four matches (must win the tournament to get a vote for "the rope"), and Asanoyama has already lost to former Sekiwake Ichinojo, one of the demoted-to-Juryo wrestlers from January.
• Four wrestlers in the top division are perfect entering today's day 5, the one-third point of the tournament.