WORKING FROM HOME has upsides and downsides, and in the month of March one of the upsides is having basketball on in the, er, background. When I was in high school, back when the ACC was smaller and its tournament began on Friday, the AP government teacher would wheel a TV into the classroom at noon, and his lucky afternoon classes would get to watch what he called "the greatest day in sports." The KC has certainly enjoyed the ACC tournament a great deal over the past, say, eight years, but nothing beats the first two days of the Big Dance, when brackets begin to disintegrate immediately and CBS bounces around giddily from upset to upset.

Today, the first ACC game is in the books, with Florida State knocking off Clemson in the final seconds (follow ACC action online here). My team is having a bit of a down season, but it's a testament to how great this game is that that only makes it marginally less fun.

In honor of the approaching anniversary of Billy Packer's tragically un-prescient meltdown over George Mason making the NCAA tournament (George Mason went on to captivate the nation with its Cinderella run, upsetting two Final Four teams from the previous year and reaching the national semifinals): The ACC Basketblog compiles general dissing of Billy Packer, and I found an entire blog devoted to the pursuit.