This is tough news. I own and love the first FD book and would like to get the second. An absolutely fun, interesting, and thought-provoking hoops blog going away is a bummer.

1. I might have picked VCU over Georgetown if I had known it would be VCU, and not USC, playing G’town when I filled out my bracket.
2. No one watches them.
3. I don’t really understand the rhyme or reason behind the choices for which teams play in them, and which teams get to play their winners - it’s not necessarily just the last eight at-large teams, and it doesn’t seem fair to have teams that won their conference tourney play a game just to get to the round of 64.
4. This whole “calling the Thursday and Friday games the Second Round” thing is dumb, confusing, and not even true for 28 of the 32 games on those days. Let’s not pretend that 60 teams get byes out of some imaginary first round.
5. It’s unnecessary. Some teams are going to be left out in the cold, and in most years, those teams are going to be teams that finished 6th or 7th or 11th in the big conferences. If the tournament’s about determining the best team in college basketball, including those teams is silly. We already know they’re not among the best teams in the nation, because they probably had home games against top 10 teams and failed to win them (or win enough of them).
6. (All of this is mainly about point one).