For me, bracket puts the 'mad' in March Madness

This sucks. March Madness, I mean. It's a killer.

And you know exactly what I'm talking about.

It's the brackets, people. It's the godforsaken brackets. They ruin the first weekend of March Madness, because these games are no longer games. Each one is an IQ test, and I just spent the past four days scoring like a sea turtle.

Trent Johnson and Stanford, are you serious with that effort? (AP)

That's what a bracket does to you. It makes you stupid -- and worse than stupid, it makes you miserable. Especially the first week, when your brackets are nice and fresh and you're rooting like an SOB to keep them that way. You're rooting during every possession of every game in every pod and region. Three or four games at a time Thursday and Friday. Another game or two at any given moment Saturday and Sunday. It's torture.

I don't root for anyone, in any sport, ever. Haven't rooted since I grew up in Norman, Okla., and Marcus Allen ran for 208 yards to lead No. 1 USC over my No. 2 Sooners 28-24 in 1981. I didn't have to look up any of those numbers, by the way. They're seared into my soul like a cattle prod from hell. That game didn't just break my heart. It removed it.

Twenty-six years later, the 2007 NCAA Tournament is digging into the area where my heart used to be and scooping out the last vestiges of ventricle. For the past four days, I rooted like a pig in a trough. I rooted like a sewer snake. I rooted, I rooted, I rooted.

And rooting blows.

This is my boss' fault.

"Fill out a bracket," he told me. "We'll post it online. Readers can see it. It'll be fun."

Oodles.

Filling out an NCAA Tournament bracket marries you to 32 teams in the first round and to 16 of those teams for the second round. Marriage isn't fun, but marriage multiplied by 32? Shoot me, and on my tombstone make sure you say something mean about Georgia Tech. I had those knuckleheads going to the Elite Eight. When Georgia Tech found itself in a great first-round game with UNLV, you think I was enjoying the spectacle on television? Hell, no. I was screaming at the TV. Screaming at Javaris Crittenton. Screaming at Paul Hewitt. UNLV won. UNLV is dead to me.

Brackets twist your brain. They put you into bed with programs you don't even want to take to dinner. For example, I wouldn't pee on Bob Knight if he were on fire -- well, maybe -- but for two hours Thursday I rooted for Texas Tech to beat Boston College. Why? Because my bracket needed Texas Tech to win. Texas Tech lost. Another marriage, up in flames.

Divorce is a killer, and I've already been jilted 13 times. The carnage began with the first two games of the entire tournament: No. 13 Davidson vs. No. 4 Maryland and No. 11 Stanford vs. No. 6 Louisville. In both games my bracket had the underdog winning. Truth is, I had those underdogs going all the way to the Sweet 16. I wasn't just married to Davidson and Stanford -- I'd already picked out names for our children.