This has to be the last year. Gotta be. But like every other inveterate, incorrigible, irresponsible, soulless gambler out there, I'll be back again next year. I'll pony up my matchsticks or pistachios or seashells or whatever else I'm using that year instead of real money (because I'd never, ever, use real money), I'll make my annual transformation, like some eleven-times delayed Lon Chaney, from mere mortal to superhuman prognosticator, and emerge, swollen with confidence, howling in rage at the foolish mortals around me, bursting at the seams with pure animal ferocity, baring my teeth and welcoming the challenge of anyone foolish enough to doubt my inevitable, unavoidable, inexorable victory.

And then the Georgetown game will start.

I honestly just don't know what I'm thinking any longer. My ties to Georgetown University are minimal. I spent a sliver (really, hardly any cumulative time at all) of my childhood in a classic Georgetown townhouse on Dent Place. I had a Georgetown University basketball jacket when I was nine or ten that was about the coolest thing ever. It had snaps and looked like it was made of pure silk. It was polyester.

A good friend from high school actually went to Georgetown as an undergrad and let my girlfriend and I crash on his floor when we went to Bill Clinton's first inauguration. It was a seminal moment, in more ways than one. Later that same year, May or June, that same friend hosted me and another buddy from high school. We were 18, almost 19. It was Georgetown in the early 90's. We all got blind drunk and wandered the nearby environs for hours. I'm sure we were horrifying. We finished the evening at the top of the stairs made famous by William Friedkin's The Exorcist, looking down, swaying, wondering which of us would tumble down and break our necks first.

There's a small archway that stretches across the very bottom of the stairs, between a building on one side and what, if memory serves, is some sort of garden on the other. It's not a particularly wide archway, no wider than the staircase it floats above, obviously, and neither is it particularly broad, maybe a foot and a half. But it's high up, twenty or more feet above a remarkably steep, remarkably hard, undoubtedly bone (and neck) breaking flight of stone steps made famous by a movie centered on the notion of demonic possession. In fact, that staircase's sole purpose in Friedkin's film is to wait, patiently, almost confidently, knowing that a higher purpose awaits it in the movies final, climactic scenes.

That tiny archway is where our evening technically ended, drunk on cheap beer and testosterone the levels of which none of us has probably ever reached since, swaying in a cool breeze on an otherwise muggy night, giggling, each of us undoubtedly thinking if it'd be funny to pretend to push one of the others off. Ha ha. Two for flinching. Stupid.

Where was I? Oh right, Georgetown.

I knew Georgetown, and I knew the basketball team, but indirectly. If I'm honest with myself I was probably a fan more to rankle my step-dad, a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool, North Carolina fan who considered John Thompson and his Hoya Paranoia more closely akin to sumo than true, pure ACC basketball, the way God intended it. (You know how you can tell God's a Carolina fan, right? The sky is blue and white.)

(And before you get smart, at least Carolina flames out against teams we've all heard of before.)

The terrible irony, though, and what I've probably been trying to atone for subconsciously ever since, is that I turned my back on Georgetown at the pinnacle of their dominance, in the 1984 NCAA championship game between the Patrick Ewing led Hoyas and the brothers of the University of Houston's Phi Slamma Jamma.

My step-dad, like I said, a basketball fan, was over the moon excited for the game; I, a petulant putz still smarting at the notion of actually having a step-dad, wanted to see Police Academy. He acquiesced, we saw Police Academy, and Georgetown basketball has never been the same.

And I've had to live with the fact that I traded Ewing, Graham, Jackson, Brown and Smith for Steve Guttenberg, Kim Cattrall, Bubba Smith, Michael Winslow and G. W. Bailey ever since. Oi.

Also under the bed….

The Wizards are 21-16 since John Wall came back from his bum knee. Not too shabby. Maybe there really is light at the end of the tunnel.

Junior is atop the points chase for this year's Sprint Cup. His average finish in the first five races of the season: 4. Not bad for a guy too many always bust on for driving coattails better than he does cars.

This past Saturday, March 23, Matt Poursoltani set a new Texas state record in the bench press. Matt is 18 years old. He weighs 270 pounds. He put up 700 pounds.

For perspective, the NFL record was set by former Cowboys star Larry Allen. He put up 705 pounds. And last, congrats to the U.S. men's national soccer team on is scintillating draw against Mexico in Estadio Azteca. Never has a 0-0 draw been so exciting.