The winter sports seasons have come to a close. The cold months sizzled with another state championship trophy finding its way home to Powell courtesy of the Panther wrestlers.

Jim Zeigler’s Northwest College wrestling program found its way into the top 10 of the final national tournament standings for the 18th consecutive year and both Powell High School basketball teams traveled to Casper for the state tournament, including a consolation finish by the Powell boys while the Panther cheerleaders were fourth at state for one of their routines.

Right on cue, Mother Nature has serving up a week of tantalizing 60-degree days to greet spring soccer, track, golf and tennis kids to practice. Can the blizzards of April be very far behind?

Before we get there, however, we have this little matter of a thing called March Madness on the calendar.

I love college basketball, and I watch oodles of it during the regular season. Of course, it helps having a daughter who insists on having the television locked on ESPN broadcasts all winter long as if it were a Dora the Explorer marathon. Thanks to her, I’ve seen more mid-major games this year than I know what to do with.

Fourteen years from now, when she’s developed a sweet jump shot and an above-average understanding of the motion offense and match-up zone defense principles, this will all be worth it. We’re not sports obsessed at my house. We just believe in starting film study a little earlier than most.

Considering this, it should come as a surprise to nobody that my love for college basketball’s national tournament borderlines on what some psychologists might classify to be obsessive-compulsive behavior. I have always had a certain affinity for the NCAA tournament, and like many I have spent the last few days filling out my bracket — strictly for entertainment purposes, mind you.

And therein lies the dilemma.

For all the basketball I watch, for all the built-in home field advantage one would think someone sitting at a sports desk might possess, I have an awful admission to make.

I am the sports editor who has never, ever won an NCAA tournament pool. Not once.

I have to dress up like a CIA operative behind enemy lines in order to get invited into a college football pool. It is probably only tradition that has maintained my position in my NFL pick’em leagues. But come college basketball season, I have people from three states who practically trip over themselves to get my bracket.

None of it has worked.

In an attempt to snap this 0-for-lifetime slump, I have flipped coins. I’ve spent late nights huddled over game consoles simulating the entire tournament all the while maintaining a straight face as I tell my wife I’m performing “computer research.” Incidentally, my Playstation 2 still holds the honor of having provided me with my best performance to date, a third-place pool finish.

This year, I turned toward the Internet where at least once website has input all the statistics and trends for each of the NCAA tournament teams and will, upon request, randomly simulate the outcome for whatever game you ask. Spend two large pizzas and several late-night hours refreshing the screen and you, too, can simulate the entire NCAA tournament.

This year, this is my method. This is my madness. This is the desperate measure that desperate times have called for.

This is why I stand before you today, confidently announcing that the 2012 Final Four will be Duke, Missouri, Kansas and…Vanderbilt? Naturally, the bold computer took things one step further and predicted a Commodores national championship.

I guarantee those are words that haven’t been written in many places this week.

Truth be told, I suspect my lifetime losing streak will be stretching on for one more year. But if not, remember where you saw the words Vanderbilt and national champion written first.