Last year I tried to mimic the female-thought process in making my picks for our NCAA office pool. Having observed that women always seemed to win these contests, I thought I'd figured out why: March Madness is completely irrational and so are women. Well, apparently there are some holes in my syllogism, because while tournament basketball is indeed unpredictable (and so are women), A did not equal C, i.e., success in my office pool. Seems no matter how hard I tried (or how irrational I was) I was unable to ape the distaff mind to an adequate degree. Perhaps I needed to cross dress while making my picks. And perhaps I shouldn't have shared that.

Anyway, a woman didn't win the pool last year. A man did. That's just my luck: Roll out a cutting-edge theory and get COMPLETELY blind-sided by conventional wisdom.

Because the female angle was unkind to me last year, I'm going to temper my approach for this year's picks. I'll still stay in touch with my feminine side, but instead of acting like a completely irrational woman, I'm going to act like a somewhat irrational sports editor. The guy who won last year's pool would probably argue that he used his head and made rational picks and that's why he was successful. But he's a Jets fan, so how rational can he be? I mean, even women don't root for the Jets.

Anyway, these are my first- and second-round picks, with accompanying explanations. Next week I'll have my picks for the remaining rounds; or, if the selections below are absolutely awful, I'll try my hand with the women's bracket of the NCAA tournament. Who knows, maybe the secret to picking those games is thinking like a man.

ATLANTA REGIONAL - First round

#1 Duke over #16 Southern. J.J. Redick will be in an Aaron Spelling production before he makes an NBA All-Star team. What's with his hair anyway? Does he swim to games?

#9 UNC-Wilmington over #8 George Washington. A lot of schools named after Founding Fathers were invited to this year's tournament, including Washington, George Washington, George Mason, and Oral Roberts. Founding Fathers are so pass