Top 5 ways to recycle your busted NCAA bracket

Be honest. Your bracket is already done, isn't it?

You stared at the brackets, broke down all the stats and just knew this year was going to be the year you picked all the winners and nailed all the upsets, but after one day your dreams of bracket domination are over before they even had a chance to begin.

Harvard wasn't content with being Harvard. They had to be Harvard: Destroyer of All Bracket Hopes.

You don't even want to look at your office pool standings because you know you are behind that lady who chooses teams with the cutest mascot and best dressed coach.

She said she picked Cal because that was the nickname of Calvin, her boyfriend in high school. You don't know Calvin, but now you hate him.

It hurts, doesn't it? But you can turn that hurt into help. Why not use your now worthless bracket to bring some good into this world? Here are the top 5 ways to recycle your busted NCAA bracket.

5. Send it to needy countries - Relief organizations always take the t-shirts of the team that loses in the championship game, couldn't they use the paper from your bracket?

Maybe some tiny island nation is having a paper shortage and your donation of the Pittsburgh Elite Eight bracket will provide the sheet of paper they need to save their economy and start printing paper money.

Just think, your embarrassingly bad bracket selections will be immortalized in their first dollar bill. The citizens will think "Oklahoma Sweet Sixteen" is their national treasurer.

4. Make the world's greatest airplane - There's always time for a great paper airplane. Not long ago, a paper airplane was thrown 226 feet for a new world record. You can beat that!

Laying around beside you are all those blown-up brackets. Use them to start working on your craft, so that you, too can achieve some meaningless record.

Once you break that record, you can actually look back and be thankful you picked Belmont over Arizona as your upset special.

3. Use it as decorative gift wrap - All those lines and angles. The neat patterns the bracket makes. It's perfect for a birthday presents.

Bonus points if you can fold it so number 1 seed Louisville and the other team names in the Midwest bracket spell "Happy Birthday Lou!" Well, bonus points if the present actually belongs to someone named Lou.

If you don't know anyone named Lou, see if you can hire a random person as your "Butler" and give them the gift.

2. Write a love poem to your wife - She's upset that you ignore her every March. She joined the Facebook group that my wife wanted to start "March Madness Widows."

You spent every moment since Selection Sunday digging into the numbers, finding all the obscure stats and you just knew that the Akron Zips would make a historic run to the Final Four. The numbers lied apparently, but that sigh your wife gave as she looked at you and went to bed didn't lie.

Use the back of your bracket to write down a string of words that include what you are feeling besides "hungry." Talk about how beautiful she is and how nice her hair looked today. Yes, they will give you the benefit of the doubt with the effort.

1. Dry the tears from your eyes - Your chance at a million dollar perfect bracket is gone. Even your shot at the bag of fun size Snickers at work is done. (One of these years, you're going to beat the cute mascot/best dressed coach lady! She even picked Colorado State because she's "always wanted to go skiing there.")

No one is looking, right now. Shed your tears, then use the bracket to wipe them all from your eyes. It's one thing to make your wife angry. It's a completely different thing to let her (and your friends) see you crying because Harvard was too smart for New Mexico, your dark horse Final Four team.

Why, Harvard, why? What did I ever do to you?!? OK, I swear I'm not crying. I've got something in my eyes. My allergies are flaring up. My eyes are sweating. ... I'm just going to go to my room for a second.

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If you've only got a bracket online and not one printed out, I can't help you. You are on your own. Think about how you can save the pixels you wasted, along with the server space for ESPN. 

If you actually have a busted paper bracket, what are some other ways to put it to use ... besides wadding it up and throwing it across your office when you hear mascot lady talk about her "perfect March Mayhem baseball bracket thingy"?

This is an edited repost.

Top 10 reasons the lights went out at the Super Bowl

So ... that was awkward.

Millions, if not billions, of people watching the Super Bowl and the power goes out in the New Orleans Superdome.

This isn't the hair dryer tripping a breaker in your two bedroom apartment in the morning. This is the most watched sporting event in America coming to a grinding halt for over 30 minutes because half of the lights in the stadium refused to come back on.

There was only so many times the CBS crew could show the highlights from the first half or offer any type of significant insight. I suppose we should all be thankful that when the lights came back on we didn't find them tied up and their set looted.

Still, it all turned into a big mess. The power company is blaming the Superdome. The Superdome is blaming the power company. The NFL is blaming the New Orleans Saints' bounty program.

Regardless of who's to blame, I think I found the reason the lights went out. Here are the top 10 reasons the lights went out during the 2013 Super Bowl.

Photo from USA Today.

10. The old people from the Taco Bell commercial threw out a hip and a breaker.

9. We aren't sure how, but we all know it was George W. Bush's fault. He was trying to finish off what his hurricane machine left behind in New Orleans.

8. The lights, like every person living (and some not living), were frightened by Ray Lewis face mask and bionic arm, so they ran away.

7. It was all part of some elaborate Buffalo Wild Wings commercial.

6. Before they even official got back together, Destiny's Child broke up again and start throwing things in the dressing room.

5. The Harbaugh parents were tired of seeing their sons fight. They really didn't like that the older brother was beating up on his younger brother that badly.

4. One word: Bane.

3. If we learned anything last night, it's that we need farmers for things to go right. Unfortunately, there were no farmers at the Super Bowl. They were all working.

2. The question was finally answered. No, the Superdome was not ready for that jelly, Beyonce.

1. The NFL partnered with the WWE to bring some wrestling style excitement to the Super Bowl. If the lights had stayed out a few seconds longer Joe Flacco would have been found knocked out on the 50 yard line with a steel chair laying beside him.

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What was the most outlandish reason you heard for the Super Bowl power outage? Where is the craziest place you've been when the lights went out?

Top 5 reasons it's OK to skip church for the Super Bowl

So ... Super Bowl Sunday is this Sunday. It's the Super Bowl, but it's Sunday. Decisions, decisions.

Do you go to church or fake BigGame-itis to stay home? You know you are wrestling with this dilemma, if your church actually has services Sunday night.

Well, some of you are debating whether you need to stay home on Sunday morning, so you can get the food ready and watch the pregame show that started some time last week.

I can't help you there, but for everyone else, I'm going to give you all the excuses you need to skip church for the Super Bowl.

Just make sure you coordinate with the other football (commercial) fans in your church, so you don't try to give the same excuse when your pastor asks you if you can help with the nursery Sunday night.

Here are the top 5 reasons it's perfectly OK to skip church on Sunday Bowl Sunday.

5. Ray Lewis wears a Bible verse under his jersey – It's like a sermon on a shirt. Of course, it's a lot shorter than your pastor's sermon, a LOT shorter. But God's word is powerful, right? Even if Lewis didn't get it quite right.

You know what else is powerful? Ray Lewis' new face mask. That might actually be a reason to go to church. I'm fairly certain I've been seeing that in my nightmares. Can we have a Super Bowl party / exorcism?

4. "When in Rome do as the Romans do" – That's in the Bible, right? I mean it has to be in Romans somewhere, doesn't it? I know the Bible talks about Rome and that certainly sounds like a Jesus-y thing to say.

OK, so that's not really in the Bible, but it could be and that's good enough on questionable calls, isn't it? People make up their own Bible verses all the time. There's a decent chance your pastor won't even be able to tell the difference. Use this excuse if you feel like gambling (it's cheaper than losing money betting on the coin toss or how many time the announcers will refer to the game as the Har-bowl).

3. You don't want to be a pharisee – If you have to, play the legalism card. It's almost like a "Get Out of Doing the Right Thing Free" card. You can just say you don't want to come across as a pharisee and you gain all types of new freedoms.

Someone asks you to teach a class at church? "Well, I feel like if I did any more I would start to be spiritually arrogant. I don't want to be a pharisee." Boom. Works every time, especially when it comes to attending questionable services like Super Bowl Sunday, your birthday, that really pretty day a few weeks back, the Sunday it was raining kinda heavy and, of course, Christmas Eve.

2. Fellowship – One word. It's all you need, especially if you are Baptist. You can excuse almost anything, if you serve food at it and label it as a fellowship.

Just invite some friends over to watch the game with you. If they are from your church, then you just call it a church fellowship. If they go to a different church, it's cross-church fellowship. If your friends don't go to any church. Easiest of all. Evangelistic outreach.

1. Tim Tebow might show up – You can't miss that. What kind of Christian would you be if you did not stay home to make sure you catch a glimpse of the Pope of Football? You will want the New York Jets (for now) back-up QB to bless you and your sport viewing experience.

Your pastor may try to guilt you, but remember that Tebow is closer to Jesus than your pastor. No good follower of Jesus would pass up the opportunity to see him, perhaps even touch the hem of his jersey through your television screen. Just don't count on Tebow to fix a flaw in your throwing mechanics. His powers don't extend that far.

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Is your church having services Super Bowl Sunday night? If so, are you going? If you aren't going, what excuse are you giving?

Ray Lewis, redemption & the rest of us

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis is an enigma for much the media and football fans.

He is a violent and intimidating defender on the football field, but he has been involved in numerous off the field charitable activities for those in need in the Baltimore area.

Along with two companions, Lewis was charged with murder after two people were stabbed to death in 2000, but he has been quoting Scripture after games and his faith has been profiled by numerous media outlets.

While many have become enamored with the linebacker's story, others have become wary of any life change and weary of granting Lewis the status as some spiritual leader.

Suddenly, Ray Lewis has become fodder for a national conversation on redemption.

Photo from The Washington Post

Sports radio can be ... interesting. Often times, hosts attempt to be as controversial as possible believing that will bring in listeners and ad revenue.

Some have intelligent discussion on athletics in America. Others are little more than shock jocks with a limited focus. So it was not much of a surprise when I heard one host pushing the envelope on the Ray Lewis story.

The host was upset that Lewis had morphed into a religious figure despite his checkered, to say the least, past. He did not believe the former player for the infamous, in terms of brashness and rule violation, University of Miami warranted what he perceived to be glowing media coverage.

As he was closing out his rant to head to commercial break, he uttered something which struck me as much more revealing than the host was attempting to be. He yelled into his microphone:

"Maybe if you didn't kill two people, you wouldn't need a redemption story."

There it was. Lewis needed redemption because he was involved in a fight that resulted in the death of two people.

How dare Lewis speak anything about God or grace or glory when his past had this possible dark side? Lewis should spend the rest of his life atoning for his sins, whatever they may have been.

I'm guessing the radio host is morally perfect, right?

I don't know what Lewis did or didn't do on that fateful January night in 2000. For that matter, I have no idea what the host was doing that night or any other night.

What I do know is that Ray Lewis did indeed need redemption, but so did the radio host, and so did you and I. In fact Ray Lewis, the radio host, you and I still need redemption.

Every one of us needs a redemption story. It may not involving being redeemed from life as an accused murderer, but none of that changes our need for redemption.

As one who hunted Christians down and murdered them, Saul needed redemption, but his need was no greater than Lydia who was a wealthy, influential business women.

Matthew was a despised tax collector before he became a disciple, but he didn't need Christ any more than Peter who was a common fisherman.

When the standard is perfect, none of us measure up. When the gap between us and God is so great, everyone falls short.

We all need a redemption story – Ray Lewis, the radio host and the rest of us.