March is Here! Time to Get to Work.

For the past 15 years, my father, my uncle and I have gone to Laughlin, Nevada for the first weekend of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. This annual event is much more than just three guys getting away from their spouses and/or significant others for a what-happens-in-Laughlin-stays-in-Laughlin type of vacation.

From Left: Uncle Art, me and Dad.

Throughout the winter, we’re watching various teams on television, reading all kinds of articles in the newspaper and sport magazines, and checking to see if we saw the team that neither one of us thought even existed. When the conference tournaments start, we take control of our televisions and remote controls to watch every game. And I really mean every game.

Eventually “Selection Sunday” comes around. Dad, uncle and I have already decided who is going to be 1, 2, 3, 4 … 14, 15, 16 seeds, so the only question is: Did the selection committee get it right? That leads to two straight days of visiting school websites and the blogs of various college basketball pundits, and filling out more than one bracket. And then it’s time to go to work.

My uncle lives in Denver, my dad in Phoenix and I in northern Arizona. My uncle flies to Phoenix, he and my dad pick me up on the way, and for the next three hours we share our thoughts, reread the scouting reports and review our home-made statistic comparison charts.

Obviously, the purpose is to make money. Once in Laughlin, we get all of our “guaranteed”, “sure-to-win”, “no doubt about it” bets in and then we start looking over the other games for additional profits. When the first game starts, the three of us are with the thousands of other basketball junkies watching the games and screaming like school girls when the last second half-court heave goes in and makes us losers. We know enough about basketball to make us dangerous second guessers. “Why is the coach playing that guy? He’s going to foul in the next two minutes.” “Why is this guy still on the bench? He’s their best three-point shooter.” “Play zone defense.” “Play man-to-man defense.” “Get the ball to the center.” “He traveled!” “That wasn’t a foul!!!”

We do other guys-on-the-town things too – as wild as three men between the ages of 48 and 73 can do. We’re usually awake past 9 p.m., we might have two beers a day instead of one or none, and a comment stronger than “Great Googley Moogley” might come out of our mouths.

And though we may leave Laughlin with less money than we had when we drove into town, we’ll have memories to last the rest of our lives. We’ll meet some wonderful people, like the elderly couple from Vermont who taught us Pai gow Poker, or the guy from Chicago who made a large bet on a team the three of us were too afraid to bet on and walked away with a ton of money. And possibly, my uncle will inadvertently say something that will make an entire craps table stop because everyone, including the stone-faced pit boss, is laughing so hard.

But the memory that will forever be in my mind is that I spent this weekend with my Dad.