O Glorious Day! The zenith of nascent spring has arrived! Today, you can call in sick to work (tell them you need to prep for your World Series-winning colonoscopy), crack open a beer before 9:30 am on the West Coast, and stare intently at teenagers in short pants for four straight days without so much as a cocked eyebrow from your loved ones.

(2008 Final Four coverage from SPORTSbyBROOKS)

(Hint: timing’s everything on this one. One weekend in the wrong direction and you’re stuck programming your GPS to stay 200 yards from schools for the next five years.)

Here’s what you need to thrive today:

Television schedule
Watch online
Watch on your iPhone
Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

(2007 teaser from SPORTSbyBROOKS coverage)

Here’s your morning NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament storylines:

• UNC guard Ty Lawson will not play against Radford in the first round.  Please adjust your money line bets accordingly.
• However, Michael Jordan’s son will likely play more for Illinois during the tourney due to injuries.  (Odd how MJ doesn’t even provide a drop quote for his son to the NEW YORK TIMES, leaving all the talking to Mom.)
• And Levance Fields feels much better, making him available for Pitt.
• Mike Krzyzewski got his back out of whack when he heard President Obama didn’t even pick Duke to go to the Final Four.  (Worse: he picked Lawson’s team to win it all.) Don’t get excited, Coach K… he did pick your team to be prepared for a little thing called “life”.
• Gus Johnson will call games in Memphis with as much gusto as he calls out bad service in a restaurant: loudly enough to get handcuffed.
• Finally, if you haven’t filled out your brackets yet, follow our advice: you can never go wrong shaking the Big Ten teams off your sheet like Mateen Cleaves works a towel.

Since you now have a few hours to kill, here’s the hail of bullet points to distract you while considering why you’re getting sex advice from China’s last eunuch (and how they tested for this):

• The United States lost to Venezuela 10-6 in second-round WBC action with slightly more meaning than a rerun of “Maude” since both teams had already advanced to the semifinals.
• More pressing: why aren’t you all out there supporting the U.S. squad? Don’t you know Tommy Lasorda said you’d go to hell if you didn’t cheer loudly enough? (And does this make the U.S. team a Bizarro Tinkerbell?)
• If you want to see what poor support at home looks like, follow Cuba back to the island after they were eliminated by Japan in a repeat of the 2006 final.

• Continuing the international baseball thread, Manny Ramirez and his balky hamstring enjoyed the game of cricket yesterday in the desert. Four out of five doctors agree that many ailments can be cured or temporarily assuaged by applying an appearance fee to the affected area.
• As always, you can stop Mexican drug wars temporarily if the local soccer team does well.
• If you’re a referee, you’d probably rather not have a potential replay rule change named after you. Too bad, Ed Hochuli.
• Donté Stallworth is very sorry that someone died.
• Grandpa Warner has hip surgery. His helmet next season will come with a radio and a hearing aid.
• Things are getting interesting in New York City sports talk radio. And by “interesting”, we of course mean “catty”.
• The Cubs are retiring the number shared by Fergie Jenkins and Greg Maddux. Cubs fans would have settled for retiring Dallas Green before letting Maddux escape to Atlanta in his prime.
• Also, you don’t apparently have to live near the USOC to lay off 13 percent of your staff. And we doubted the USOC CEO!