Fromage and the Final Four

Quote of the day 3:
"Our trade deficit has greatly worsened, to the point that our country's 'net worth,' so to speak, is now being transferred abroad at an alarming rate."
--Warren Buffett in 2003 in Fortune

Steve Martin used to have a routine in which he repeated phrases in French, one of them being “omelette du fromage.”

In that vein, what we have this weekend is “quatre du finale.”

America is celebrating the arrival once more of the boys of summer as ice is still melting in the northern reaches and buds just begin to appear on the maple trees. But the sports world’s real story at this moment is college basketball.

For the first time, four number-one seeds are in the final four of the NCAA tournament, and they are good teams indeed. There is pretty fair regional representation--UCLA, University of Kansas, Memphis and University of North Carolina (I think someone in that basketball-embedded state is still pushing the NCAA for a rule that says at least one of its teams makes it each year).

Of these, UCLA, UNC and Memphis are especially fierce--we’re talking intense, driven, high-level basketball. These teams have been something else to watch as they’ve come through the tournament. Not that any of their paths were an uninterrupted breeze. UCLA stumbled twice--once in the opening round. Memphis was given quite a test by Mississippi State.

Kansas is just a bit of a different story. Last weekend, they came close to being knocked out by an excellent and underrated Davidson team (from North Carolina, by the way), and seemed a bit lackluster in the process. Maybe it was just a bad day.

We may have one, two or three games that will be the best in any sport this year.

Wait, when’s the game on?