WITH THE FINAL FOUR UPON US...

For as big a basketball fan as I used to be, I spend precious little time watching games on television anymore. My suspicion is that since I'm a college basketball coach, I'm so immersed in it as my job that I can't enjoy it as a fan so much anymore. My guess is that if I were a teacher, at the end of an eight hour day with the students, the last thing I'd be interested in doing is going and watching a professor teach an evening class for a couple of hours as a way to unwind. Same principle.

From 1985 to 1994, however, I was as big a junkie as there was out there. I bought a half-dozen preseason magazines each year, memorized all the teams and players throughout the nation, knew about all the upcoming prospective recruits to the elite teams, watched ballgames religiously...in other words, a freak. Maybe it was the downturn in the fortunes of my favorite teams (Indiana and Louisville), potentially the start of my own coaching career, who knows, but at best I evolved into a casual observer and nothing more.

But it was a great time to watch, with the NCAA Tournament being the best weekend of all. And so, the ten best games that I witnessed over the years, the intensity of which I hope will be matched this week:

Louisville vs. Duke (1986 championship)
Indiana vs. Syracuse (1987 championship)
Kansas vs. Oklahoma (1988 championship)
Michigan vs. Illinois (1989 semifinal)
Duke vs. UNLV (1991 semifinal)
Duke vs. Indiana (1992 semifinal)
North Carolina vs. Michigan (1993 championship)
UCLA vs. Arkansas (1995 championship)
Arizona vs. Kentucky (1997 championship)
Connecticut vs. Duke (1999 championship)

The best tournament, overall, that I saw was in 1990, even though it ended in a terribly anticlimatic way with three Final Four games decided by average margins of 17.7 points (including a brutal beatdown of Duke by UNLV in the championship). But of the 60 games during the first four rounds of the tournament, 29 were decided by four points or less. I'm fairly certain that I didn't miss a single minute of action on Thursday or Friday that year...which was an interesting trick because I was a sophomore in high school and had to try to find a television at NAHS to watch the games from 12:00 to 2:35.

PARENTS, DO NOT LET YOUR KIDS READ THIS POSTING!!!

Seriously, you've been warned. There is inappropriate language and content straight ahead. No one under the age of 15 should be even thinking about clicking on these links. I'm not kidding.

Alright, I'll confess that I never really watched The Man Show and I've seen even less of Jimmy Kimmel's talk show. He's funny enough, I guess, but it was never important enough to carve out the time in my schedule. So I was clearly not aware until recently of his "feud" with Matt Damon.

Here's the set-up, in chronological order. Evidently, a running gag at the end of Kimmel's show every night was to say that Matt Damon had been scheduled but due to time constraints they had to bump him. All apologies, we'll try to reschedule, and so on. In truth, Matt Damon of course was not scheduled, but a funny bit nonetheless. As you can see from the second half of the clip above, they finally actually did bring Matt Damon on one night, then due to a lengthy introduction, ran out of time and bumped him. And People's Sexiest Man Alive melted down with a profanity-laced, no doubt Bobby Knight-inspired tirade. Convincing enough that there were many out there who evidently bought into this "feud."

To play it up even more, Kimmel got one of his flunkies to fake like they were going to interview Damon on the red carpet at the Ocean's Thirteen premiere, then cut it short. That was followed by a hysterical send-up of the same flunky inserting himself into "The Bourne Ultimatum" and running into Jason Bourne himself.

Well, Matt Damon got a little "payback" with the help of Kimmel's girlfriend, the raunchy Sarah Silverman. And while everything before this was funny, this was side-splitting, tears running down my face hysterical. It's gotten nearly 10 million hits at this point on ABC.com and YouTube.

Kimmel, of course, had a response this week, playing off Damon's video and adding a few new wrinkles.

Seriously, if you're under 15, get the hell out of here!

p.s. Matt Damon does a hell of a Matthew McConaughey!

MORE YOUTUBE FUN

So I'm checking my e-mail at lunch today and there's a message from my brother Jeff. It give a link to YouTube and the text of his message is this:

"Oh. Dear. God."

Of course, I can't check YouTube at work (something about productivity in the workplace). But he seems duly impressed, so I ask for a little more detail. And back comes the message:

"Let me give this teaser...Sir Mix-a-Lot...three white guys...accoustic."

Well, if your curiosity was a piqued as mine was, take a gander over here...

Now, that was pretty funny, but I don't think I fell into any sort of hysterics over it. However, this one never ceases to crack me up

MORE SATURDAY NIGHT LOVE FOR YOUR (HOPEFUL) ENJOYMENT

Bill Murray is not funny.

Paul Simon in an interesting costume for his opening monologue.

Queen Latifah...how she got through this one without cracking up is beyond me.

Robert DeNiro; he's not just a serious dramatic actor!

We're not all like this!

Funny because it's (allegedly) true...

And Michael Eisner hasn't sued yet?

One of the best openings ever, compliments of Mr. Steve Martin.

BETTER GET THESE UP HERE BEFORE N.B.C. TAKES THEM DOWN

Saturday Night Live might not be as good as it used to be, but there are still bits of damn good humor on there:

Chris Rock doing a surprise cold opening.

Peyton Manning in the funniest fake commercial SNL has every done.

Justin Timberlake is the best host they've had in the past five years...be warned, this is an unedited version (hide the kiddies).

Not a sketch, but a collection of Will Ferrell bloopers.

"I don't swim; I'm not that...strong a swimmer." (old school SNL)

It's funny because it's true.

Robert Smiegel is a dang genius...although this is just wrong.

When America goes the way of the Roman Empire, it won't be nuclear war, invasion by the commies, or even moral decay from the inside caused by professional wrestling. I'm convinced that the Internet and all the entertaining ways it allows us to waste our days away is going to cause us to slip into further mediocrity. So sayeth the yahoo on the Internet blogging away.

Sites like YouTube have got to be right at the top of that list of sites that is going to accelerate this process. I have to force myself to limit time there to just five minutes or so a day. Too much more, and I'd find hours at a time slipping past me.

There's much better stuff on YouTube to be found than this, but several of these cartoons left me chuckling out loud and grateful that no one was around to hear my chortling. Call them inspired revisions of classic movies, and how they might have turned out with just a slight twist coming down the stretch. There are quite a few to choose from, but my favorites were Star Wars, Superman: The Movie, Saving Private Ryan, Se7en, and (without question, my favorite take) Lord of the Rings.

Chortle away.