Larry Brown Sports

March Madness has ended, the 9th place team from the Big East is your national champion, and I’d like a refund back for that horrible movie last night. Anyway, it’s time to follow up on the LBS March Madness Bracket Contest.

All congratulations go to Ben Smith who picked his alma mater to win it all (something LBS writer Del should have done). Smith ran away with the pool posting 99 points.

We asked Ben what he thought about winning and what made him choose UConn. Smith, who attended UConn and roomed with LBS’ own Steve DelVecchio, says “It feels good to win, and it feels better that UConn won it for me. I chose UConn because I recently graduated there. I honestly stopped following all the pools I was in when I had two teams in my elite eight still alive; it was one of those years with my picks. Luckily in the end, my team pulled through for me.” Congrats to Ben on the victory, come forward and accept thy prize, noble man (a copy of MLB2K11).

Second place goes to LBS’ leading lady Sakeena, who scored 71 points and road the Butler Bulldogs all the way to the Final Four. She also nailing four of the Elite Eight teams, correctly picking Kansas, North Carolina, UConn, and of course, Butler. She gets a prize pack from Axe that includes new Axe shower gels, a shower tool, and some JBL iPod dock speakers.

Jaclyn Frishman withstood the disappointment of having two Final Four teams knocked out in the second round of the tournament by having a nearly perfect West Region, helping her finish third. She got all but two games correctly in the West and had half the Elite Eight teams picked. She’ll receiver her choice of Top Spin 4 the video game, or an LBS shirt.

Jason Hoffman locked up fourth place by picking UConn to reach the Final Four, edging out 5th place finisher Sean Zech by a point.

Congrats to all the pool winners and thank you to everyone who participated! As for the winners, please contact me via email to receive your prize.

CBS, TBS, TNT, and TruTV are teaming up this year to ensure every single game in the 2011 NCAA Tournament is televised. That means if you have cable or a satellite dish, you can watch any game going on at any time on one of those four stations.

The other good news is that March Madness on Demand is being offered once again for free. Just go to the MMOD site and launch the application which brings up a sweet looking interface (pictured above). From there, you get to choose what game you want to watch. This system is a heck of a lot better than the days where you had to wait “in line” before you finally got to watch a game online.

The other nice thing about March Madness on Demand this year is that the application is available on iPhones, iPod touches, and the iPad. It’s truly amazing to think of how far things have come from the days of needing CBS to take you from site to site to now being able to control what you watch at home, on your computer, or even on your phone.

How about let’s give it up for technology and the way its perfected our ability to consume March Madness to the fullest!

If you haven’t had a chance to join the LBS March Madness pool, make sure you do. Enter here. The top four finishers win prizes, including your choice of:

- MLB 2K11 the video game
- Top Spin 4 the video game
- iPod stereo dock courtesy of AXE shower gels
- LBS T-Shirt
- Bragging rights!

Don’t forget to join in the fun.

It’s that time of the year where everyone fills out their brackets to show off their knowledge of college hoops. You’re probably planning on joining several pools, so why not join in on the LBS March Madness group? It’s pretty simple — join our bracket on Facebook by clicking here. We have prizes available to the top four finishers.

PRIZES, PRIZES, PRIZES

See What We’re Giving Away to the Top Four Finishers

- Copy of MLB2K11 the baseball video game with Roy Halladay on the cover, and featuring Brian Wilson. They have the Perfect Game Challenge where you can win a million bucks if you throw a perfect game. Here’s the official trailer for the game:

- Copy of Top Spin 4 tennis video game that includes an All-Star cast of modern and legendary players (check the trailer here)

- Axe Shower Gel prize pack. Includes AXE Shower Gels and an AXE Detailer Shower Tool, and the new JBL On Stage IV iPod dock speakers.

- LBS Nuts t-shirt. here’s how it looks:

So click here to join the LBS March Madness Group and win some prizes!

Contest 1
Undoubtedly you have been preparing hardcore for your upcoming fantasy football draft. You’ll be studying up so you can throw everything from the kitchen sink to the kitchen tables at your opponent. Luckily for you, I’ve been doing expert fantasy football work for Sporting News Radio and have been putting together my draft boards to help guide you (here are my RB rankings).

I wanted to invite you to join a private league for LBS readers through Johnsonville’s Rush for 2000 Challenge. The game is really cool and very simple: pick one running back per week and the better your guy does the better you do. Go to the Johnsonville Rush for 2000 Challenge to sign up and choose the Larry Brown Sports league to join: password is moresausage. Also at the league site you can learn about the prizes they’re giving away each week.

Contest 2
As you read in the title, we’re giving away an NFL jersey and a $125 gift card to CSN Stores (all kinds of awesome stuff, check em out!) as part of our own contest. Here’s how it works:

We’d like you to spread the word about LBS. All you have to do is send an email to your friends/family recommending larrybrownsports.com (don’t forget to include a link!) as a fun, entertaining sports site for them to check out. Or if you prefer, you can email out an individual story you think they might enjoy. Make sure you CC me on the email (larry@larrybrownsports.com) so I receive it.

The person who emails the most amount of people gets their choice of an NFL jersey for their favorite team (compliments of Johnsonville) or a $125 gift card to CSN Stores. The runner up gets whatever prize is left over. No making up email addresses either — we can track them to see if they’re bogus. This contest will run through the end of the week.

Over the past few days you may have noticed the site being down on occasion or slow to load. We spent the weekend migrating from our old host to a new web host with an upgraded server. It’s just a bunch of internet jargon that I really don’t understand either. Point is, sorry if your LBS experience has been hindered in any way over the past few days and the plan is for everything to run smoothly and uninhibited in the future. LBS is growing and that’s a good thing! Thanks for being a part of it and we appreciate you continuing to spread the LBS love.

This will only take 30 seconds of your time, I promise. Our advertising partner would like more information about you because they’re trying to learn more about our readers. All I request is that you fill out this very simple 10 question survey. Upon completion of the brief survey, you’ll be eligible for a $100 American Express gift card. Pretty please fill it out, with sugar on top.

Here’s the link to the survey.

I realize that you may be reading the website at work or some other environment where you might not want people to know what you’re up to. With that in mind, I have taken a cue from CBS March Madness online and NBC’s Olympics coverage by creating our very own LBS Boss Button. It is located on the right sidebar, just below the search box. I feel it is a pretty convenient location and that it takes you to a pretty safe page. Please email me or comment on this post with your feedback on the boss button. Like the idea? Would a different location be more helpful? Does the page it jumps to work for you? Let me know … I’m trying to protect you so you can continue to enjoy LBS whenever and wherever possible!

It’s not often that we pat ourselves on the back here at LBS, and that’s probably because most of what we do is crap. I recognize that. But even if our expertise is only posting garbage, we take some pride in knowing that we’ve been doing it for quite some time. This little blurb here is officially the 3,000th post written at LBS, which isn’t bad considered the site is just over three years old (started in January of 2007 – we haven’t changed much, have we?). We’re averaging just over two and a half posts a day since the site’s inception. I realize that you’d love to see more content generated here. I’m right there with you. Unfortunately, things like full-time jobs and life sometimes get in the way, but I continue to make a great effort to give you an enjoyable product with fresh content as frequently as possible.

It’s almost funny that a few years ago we were in the heart of a blogs vs. mainstream media debate. Now, nearly all the big sports sites have bloggers working full-time, and even some blogs that started out part-time have gone full-time. That makes it hard to keep up with the competition production-wise. With that in mind, keep your eye on the byline for each post because you may start to see new writers pop up in an effort to provide you with more quality content. Lastly, and most importantly, thank you for taking time out of your day to read the site. Whether it’s once a day, once a week, or once in a while, I don’t care — just that you’re reading means a lot to me. Thanks for your support of LBS and please pass along the word if you know someone who might enjoy the site.

A lot of people who read the site have no idea that I work for Sporting News Radio as a show host and update anchor and that I work on this website on the side. Likewise, many people who listen to the show have no idea that I also have a sports site on the side. So for those who were curious or happened to listen to the Sunday morning show I was hosting during football season, I wanted to apprise you of my new schedule. LBS takes the radio waves by storm on the following nights:

Friday: 11pm-5am PT
Saturday: 8pm-1am PT
Sunday: 8pm-11pm PT

You can listen at sporting news radio’s site, on Sirius channel 127, or on your local affiliate. For those who don’t care and just want their share of funny videos, scandalous pictures, and inane commentary, sorry to bother you. Please carry on as you were. Thank you for your time.