TOURNEY DELAYED! IKEA RUNS OUT OF BRACKETS!
Selection Committee Desperate To Leave Indy!

UN 'Bracket Embargo' Finally Takes Toll!

Vitale Swallows Tongue, Keeps Talking!

 Indianapolis, IN - The NCAA basketball tourney hit an unexpected snag Sunday when, halfway through the selection of the four-region, sixty-five team field, officials announced that the Chicago Ikea had unexpectedly run out of brackets. The Ikea brackets are perfect for tourney selection because they're inexpensive yet can hold the weight of even heavy, three-name schools like "University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee." The Swedish self-assembly furniture store said only that they had the brackets, known as "hopen supports," on back order, but no one at the store could be found who could confirm if that back order was on a rush, and then NCAA officials got lost in the store and were unable to find the exit for over three hours. Other Ikeas were contacted by phone but they too were out of the needed brackets and in fact attempted to substitute the more expensive Frijen supports. With 65 teams, this substitution would have cost the NCAA an additional $11,000 and was hence scrapped. The Stockholm-based company said it could do nothing to rush shipping, as it used exclusively rusty, unregistered cargo ships that leak gas and oil to get goods from Sweden to the U.S. in order to keep costs down. They did, however, offer all sixty-five teams unlimited swedish meatballs. Fraternites around the country have donated cinder blocks with plywood shelving in an effort to keep the brackets on schedule.
NANTZ, PACKER: DID THEY COME OUT ON SELECTION SHOW?

Chicago, IL - Despite a raging debate, sex experts across the country cannot agree on whether or not CBS college hoops announcers Jim Nantz and Billy Packer actually came out of the closet as a couple on Sunday's Tourney Selection Show. "They were sitting extraordinarily close to each other," said a columnist for the Advocate, "I mean, who sits like that? Love sits like that." But an expert from the Kinsey Institute insisted, "Clearly they're two dominant males who've just happened to piss on overlapping turf. That guy from the Advocate is always finding 'gay' where it ain't." A sex expert from CBS Sports said, "Come to think of it, we didn't actually ask them to squeeze in that tight." A spokesman for Packer said he merely forgot his bifocals at the hotel and needed to 'scrunch in' to see the prompter. However it was later learned that Packer left his bifocals in Nantz's hotel room. This is gonna make some of those early-round dog games a teensy bit more interesting, hey fans?

FOX SPORTS COUNTERPUNCH - BIKINI CURLING!
A bit nippy for today's contest.
A bit nippy for today's contest.
Los Angeles, CA - Fox Sports announced Sunday that it has what it considers "some pretty damn fine American counter-programming" to the NCAA basketball tourney. Fox Sports will air versus every single tourney game, a brand-new network-sponsored bikini curling league game! The league will pit teams of strippers, exotic dancers, actresses, and lingerie models against each other in America's fastest-growing non-contact restricted ice sport. Curling - on the brink of breaking into the big time for some years now - has not officially sanctioned the league but has donated instructors to help the hot chicks in bikinis learn the sport "the right way." Said curling spokesman Don Huskvarnnenenn, "Bikinis should certainly liven up the traditionally slowest part of the sport, the sweeping." Though an episode hasn't even aired yet, ad rates have already topped the numbers achieved by the critically acclaimed Fox sitcom, "Arrested Development."
CRICKET MATCH CALLED DUE TO CRICKETS!

Lumpcoal, England - An early-season cricket match between Lumpcoal and Flabbotham had to be postponed only two-and-a-half days into the frame when a swarm of new spring crickets hatched literally under the feet of the players on the Lumpcoal pitch and immediately swallowed up everything in sight! Most cricketeers managed to fight their way back to the clubhouse using mallets and stiff upper lips, but Lumpcoal police had to dive in in riot gear to save Flabbotham wicketman Sanjay Viljanronpoop, the B League's fiery top bowler who took a job as a 'where-are-they-now' website designer for Spice Girls, Inc. just to establish residency in Britain. A shaken Viljanronpoop told authorities that while the crickets did not bite, they were "quite vocal" and "extraordinarily curious" about every orifice on his body. Viljanronpoop was rushed to Desperatton Medical Center where he was listed in fair condition with a case of what doctors called "invaded buttocks." Meanwhile, Lumpcoalers made the best of the situation by baking large batches of fresh cricket pudding!