Regular readers of this space know that I often deride the state of sports reporting. In this I am not alone, but last night I may have gotten over the hump of my jock journalism problem: As ESPN: The Magazine’s 10th anniversary party raged in midtown Manhattan, I didn’t even care. The commemorative event of the gig that once defined this reporter failed to even pop onto his radar. It didn’t emerge as reflection on the invite sitting on the ol' home desktop, nor as an association of the college basketball tournament action playing across TV screens in the downtown L.A. bar where I bullshat and drank with friends.

I mention this absence of angst because overheated reporting will reach a seasonal peak this weekend as we prep for one of nation’s most celebrated bacchanals. No, I’m not talking about your prospective St. Patrick’s Day drunkening. For most of us, the highlight of next week is March Madness, America’s most acceptable excuse for slagging work. Through the month’s end, we’ll be treated our most sustained episode of sports drama. It works almost as antecedent to the sustained snore-fest that is the Major League Baseball season. In the most middling of NCAA tournaments, you’re gonna see enough buzzer-beating action to make up for the summer of long, slow walks to the mound, batter’s box filibustering and punctuation of spectacular play that’s at the heart of the alleged national pastime. (I kid baseball because I love baseball and everything it stands for.)

So, do like me and don’t think about what comes of all the revenue that the tournament generates. Don't think about what goes down after the last buzzer has sounded. Just act like you're a rich white person — but not a thinking journo — and enjoy the games. I know I will. It's not as though we aren't actually all in this life together, or anything.

And because I really, really feel like I've found a way to divorce the substance of the games from the facts of life, I can tell you that USC is the sleeper team of the tournament. They ain't gonna make the Final Four or no bananas shiz-nit like that. (My actual penultimate play picks are (North Carolina, UCLA, Georgetown and Tennessee.). But the unranked Trojans will mos def fuck up a highly-seeded team or two. At the year's start, Southern Cal (20-10 before Thursday's Pac-10 Tournament contest against Arizona State) looked like sad one-man team as it ground out a win over Washington at the Galen Center. And USC showed only flashes of brilliance over the next month. Then O.J. Mayo turned NBA-ready in the wake of a horrific performance (4 points 10 turnovers) against UCLA in February and the Trojans grew from withstanding Daniel Hackett's mid-season stretch of injury, indicating that they are ready to assume the mantle of 2008's teaser squad. Give them props in your brackets, but don't get all crazy.

See, isn't it awesome to play down the broader implications of sport? Let me bow out on a note of properly placed concern by giving a shout-out to the late Howard Metzenbaum, a pivotal icon of my Ohio youth. Now there was a cat with a reasonable sense of perspective.