Football season is over

More or less. Obviously there is one big game left, the Super Bowl between the Patriots (ack) and the Giants (ack), but there are two looong weeks between now and then, and over-analysis by a fan can lead to burnout before the game is actually played. Now is the best time for the casual fan to switch gears. Football has dominated the sports conversation (and this blog) for the past 4-5 months, now it is time to switch gears to a different sport. No offense to the NHL and NBA, but their regular seasons are long and tedious for those with no serious rooting interest.

That leaves college basketball, which is right in the thick of their conference schedule at the moment. Luckily for you readers, I have working diligently behind the scenes on computer rankings for all 341 Division 1 teams since the season began in November. And I am proud to announce that tomorrow, 1/21/08, I will be debuting these rankings on this blog.

I have decided to not present these in a traditional list format, from #1 to #341. There are many of these rankings already available on the web, from the standard Top 25 polls to the RPI rankings and beyond. Neither will I try to delineate between who deserves to be invited to the NCAA Tournament and who doesn't. There are also a number of sites on these internets that already do a great job of this (the famous Bracketology on ESPN.com being perhaps the best).

Rather, I will use my rankings to help readers figure out what they care about most with regards to this sport: Who to fill out the bracket with when it comes out in March. I'm not sure exactly the method in which I'll present this, but you'll just have to come back tomorrow to find out!

A little tease for everyone:

#1 North Carolina
#2 Kansas
#85 Penn State
#341 New Jersey Institute of Technology