July 9, 2008

Miss the madness? No need: We have the National Champs All-Stars Bracket

By Gary Parrish | CBSSports.com Senior Writer
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College basketball fans are passionate.

This I know firsthand because of e-mail, and it should come as no surprise that the most passionate are the ones who have enjoyed the most success -- proof being how I am writing this very sentence on an afternoon in July and there are 1,259 people looking at a message board dedicated to Kentucky basketball, right now. It's crazy. And I must admit these things often skew how I approach offseason topics because, as my friend and predecessor Dan Wetzel told me recently, when you're writing about college basketball in the offseason you'd better make it national or about Indiana or North Carolina.

So with that in mind, how about this?

J.J. Redick doesn't make the grade for Duke since he failed to win a national title. (Getty Images)

But there's a catch. Only players with national title rings are eligible, meaning Paul Pierce is not eligible for Kansas but Danny Manning is, just like Tyler Hansbrough is not eligible for North Carolina but Sean May is.

(Note to readers: For the sake of my inbox, let's go over that last point one more time, can we? Please do not e-mail wondering why Wilt Chamberlain isn't on the Kansas team or why J.J. Redick isn't on Duke. We did not overlook them. It's just that they do not have national title rings, and players without rings weren't eligible to compete in this hypothetical version of March Madness taking place in July. You got that? For God's sake, tell me you got that!)

(And while I'm on the subject of rosters, I should make sure you know we reached out to each school for assistance in compiling the teams, basically left them in charge of things. All schools were kind enough to help, and I can't thank them enough. But what I'm really trying to say is that if you love or hate your roster you should give most of the credit or blame to your school, and I think that should pretty much take me off the hook for any and all responsibility when somebody complains that Darrell Arthur should replace Bob Kenney as KU's sixth man, or whatever.)

Anyway, here's the deal: No. 1 UCLA (11 titles) and No. 2 Kentucky (seven titles) get first-round byes. So today we have what are essentially quarterfinal matchups featuring No. 3 Indiana (five titles) vs. No. 6 Kansas (three titles) and No. 4 North Carolina (four titles) vs. No. 5 Duke (three titles). Yes, the Tar Heels and Blue Devils are facing each other in the first round thanks to a tiebreaker that gave Duke the fifth seed above Kansas based on Duke winning its third title (in 2001) before Kansas won its third (in 2008), and I think I just heard a Laettner sucks chant coming from Tobacco Road.

Voting is open ... now!

It's up to you to look at the rosters, decide which team is better and vote accordingly, and keep in mind we are talking about college basketball here, not the NBA.

First-round voting closes July 15 at 3 p.m. ET, then the second-round matchups will be announced July 16 and we'll continue on this schedule until the championship matchup is announced July 23. Voting for that closes July 29 at 3 p.m. ET and we'll unveil the champion July 30.

So get going and get to it and be as passionate as ever. Eternal bragging rights are on the line, and if your team ends up in a last-second situation against Duke and Christian Laettner, please implore your coach to guard the inbounds passer, if nothing else.