Ian: I live in the Canadian Arctic without cable so you're providing all my Madness commentary.

Good God, that sounds awful.

I don't mean that you live in the Canadian Arctic. I mean that I'm providing all of your March Madness commentary. Beware! I'm making it all up!

Glenn A.: Between all of the "TV timeouts" and the other hundred or so they get now it makes the last 2 minutes of a game take what feels like 6 hours to complete.

Feels like? It does. I have a graphic representation of that that I'll mention tomorrow.

Michael Porcaro: There will always be that segment of the population that will never embrace women’s basketball, like ESPN Radio’s odious Colin Cowherd, but they need to close the gap between wheat and the chaff before the women’s tournament becomes a serious topic of sports conversation.

I agree and have written as much in the past. I think the women's game is at the stage now where the Tournament should be 32 teams, though they could stretch it to 48 without hurting anybody. It's at a roughly similar stage to where the men's game was when the Tournament began to expand beyond 16 teams. In those days, the gap was still huge between the top teams and those below, say 50, but the era of UCLA dominance was closing. That's where women's basketball is now, with the chokehold of Tennessee/UConn loosening.

Cory Boone: I like the creativity of the penalty-box idea, but it's too derivative for my taste.

mintosh: Maybe I misuderstand, but I don't think Kaufman has really thought this one through. If you treat the center line as out of bounds when it has been crossed by the offense, then when the defense taps the ball back across it, the ball goes back to. . . the offense. It is, then, even less detrimental to them that it has been tapped out of their hands the either other option. Can someone please explain Kaufman's point to me.

It's just an end line for the offense. What I mean is, if the ball goes back over the center line, it's a backcourt violation, whoever touched it last.

My use of the word "end line" seems to be confusing readers, so once again, for those who haven't read all the way back to the start of the letters: All I meant was that if the ball goes over the 10-second line, it's a backcourt violation if the offense recovers it, regardless of who touched it last. If the defense touches it first, it's a live ball. If the offense touches it first, it's a backcourt violation. The only thing that would change is the rule "that's not a backcourt violation because the defense touched it last" would go away.

nhogan: Any thoughts? Should a team be allowed to opt-out of shooting free throws in a bonus situation, if they'd prefer the chance to inbound?

I'm all for anything that reduces free throws, so yes. My actual solution, stunning in its elegance and brilliance, is to eliminate free throws.

rickpaulus: Perennial sleeper Toby Hall AND John Buck behind the dish? How are you ever going to be able to decide from that stellar platoon? What is this, a 2-person league?

Thanks for the vote of confidence. My goal in a fantasy sim league with a bunch of Baseball Prospectus guys and others like Rob Neyer is to not lose 120 games. If I can stay ahead of the '62 Mets and '03 Tigers, I'll be happy.

About the catcher thing, it's a 12-team league, so SOMEBODY's going to have a catcher who's no better than 12th in the league, right? I've got one of the worst starting catchers in the league, but also one of the best backups. Plus I have Sean Burroughs! (It's amazing who you get excited about around Round 27 of a 12-team, one league draft.)

jackburden: When you look at what Bowden has done to this team (see: Guzman, Cristian and Castilla, Vinny) is there really any doubt that this is the worst executive in the history of baseball?

Without even thinking about specifics, I'd say yes, there's doubt.

Stephen Rifkin: You can tell how important we find the WBC

By noting how little attention the pussies at ESPN paid to steroids at the event. No steroids trash talk = No legitimacy in the eyes of sports/entertainment.

Also by the fact that the start of the broadcast was delayed about a half hour by an early-round NIT game.

Newt, I've liked you since my days at the Voice too.

rodeojones: "I'd have written fewer but I didn't have time."

as an editor at an alternative weekly, i think this should be cast in bronze and mounted handsomely on an oak plank above everybody's desk here.

I can't take credit for that. That was a nod to the apparently apocryphal Samuel Johnson quote, often credited equally apocryphally to Mark Twain, "I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have time."