This has been, by far, the craziest NCAA tournament I can ever remember. Every single game so far has increased my blood pressure, spiked my heart rate and probably shaved a few years off my life. If your bracket has survived the madness, props to you; I’m already down a two Final Four teams (I guess that’s what you get for ever having faith in a team from Pittsburgh or Notre Dame). Woof.

After a much needed break to get our heart rates back to normal, the next round of the tournament, the Sweet 16, kicks off this Thursday. Here’s a rundown of everything you need to know before you grab that bucket of wings/anti-anxiety medication and park yourself in front of the TV. Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. Sometimes with mean words. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like is photoshopping wrong!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

Recently Kye Allums became the first publicly transgendered student-athlete in NCAA history to play as a male identifying player on the George Washington University women’s basketball team. It’s a big step for transgendered athletes everywhere and first off I have to say kudos to him. Still, with any kind of groundbreaking change like this, some questions arise, and it’s time to weigh in.

The big, obvious question, of course, is where does Allums belong in the sexually segregated world of college basketball? Though he hasn’t yet undergone gender reassignment, Allums does plan to have the surgery over the summer before returning for his senior season. He has no plans to take testosterone, and therefore won’t have any hormonal advantage over the other players on the women’s team, so it seems as though it shouldn’t be an issue. But on a very base level one has to wonder how things are going to be affected. Obviously it would be unfair to expect Allums to play on the men’s team, because of the physiological differences including the lower testosterone levels, but at the same time, he is essentially a man playing on the women’s team.

What do we do with that? Where does that leave the lines that have been set up by the sport’s governing body? Read More »

If you haven’t heard the name Jayne Appel, then you haven’t tuned into ESPN or Sportscenter in the past month, because her name is everywhere. Appel, senior at Stanford University, has taken the college basketball world by storm over the past four years.

As an All-American athlete, Appel has led the Stanford Cardinal to the Women’s Final Four for the past two years. She has more basketball awards than one can count, was one of Glamour magazine’s 2009 Top 10 College Women, and was the number 5 draft pick of the WNBA, picked to play for the San Antonio Silver Stars.

Basketball has been her life, but basketball isn’t the only arena that Appel dominates. With her bleach-blonde hair, notorious neon pink painted fingernails, and constant carefree California attitude, Jayne Appel is just another girl ready to make her place in the world. And as a recently graduated senior (due to that whole WNBA draft thing), Appel has officially entered the real world. Okay, so maybe instead of a 9-5 desk job she’s playing a sport she loves, but she is just as scared about life post-college as the rest of us.

Since most girls our age haven’t seen their dreams become reality yet and don’t have their own Wikipedia page or Facebook fan site, I wanted to sit down with Appel to ask her some questions and pick her brain about life after college. Read More »

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God, college basketball is exciting.

Before you get all “WTF is wrong with you?!” let me explain.

I understand the appeal of March Madness. Really, I do. We all need a little distraction to get us through this month when midterms and papers abound, everyone’s depressed post-Spring Break and the warm weather is teasing us. But while I’m normally a pretty enthusiastic sports fan, I haven’t had a spare moment this month to turn on an episode of Gossip Girl, let alone keep track of a bracket (that I would most likely pick blindly, like my girlfriends that chose to participate).

When it comes down to it, I’m just bitter that my friends are fussing over the Elite Eight while I’m spending eight hours a day at the library. And I could really use that $600 prize…

Hence, my love-hate relationship with March Madness. I love sports (although I admittedly don’t follow college basketball), and the whole thing is awesome in theory. Nail-biter games, last-second-game-winning baskets, drinking lots of beer on a weeknight…. I see why people go mad for March Madness.

But I haven’t seen my guy friends in a week (I have lightbulbs that need to be changed and luggage that needs to be lifted, hello!). On the rare occasion I do run into a few of them (usually between classes), the convos are inevitably all about brackets and players and upsets. Which I do not understand. And while they’re all sitting at the bar chowing down on wings and rooting on whatever teams are still left at this point, I’m sitting in the ‘brary, alone, drinking bottled water (because that’s all we’re allowed to have).

March Madness, I want my friends back!

I’m a Michigan fan to my core, but hard as I tried to root for anyone but Michigan State in Final Four, I couldn’t control my yelps/fist pumps as those Spartans sunk basket after basket. And I couldn’t fight the desire to head downtown to Detroit to celebrate after the fact. I felt like I was in the twilight zone – rooting for State AND hanging out in Detroit?

What a strange, strange day.

And it was awesome. There were hot basketball fans all over the city and despite the $200 I lost playing blackjack at the Detroit casino (I was sitting next to a really cute UNC fan and didn’t want to get up….) the entire evening was really quite fun.

And now it is the moment of reckoning (for college basketball…not T.I.): the NCAA basketball final is here. Tonight the top two basketball teams in the country will face off for the ultimate title. Which team will come out on top: Barack Obama’s pick, UNC, or the Michigan State Spartans? And, the bigger question, will this game be over in time for the season premiere of The Hills?

We can only hope.
Who are you rooting for tonight?

March Madness kicks off today with the first 16 teams competing to move ahead, and while one CollegeCandy writer isn’t into the games, everyone else in the world is.

It’s the most exciting three weeks of the year for college sports as the entire country stops everything they are doing (seriously, even President Obama is trying to squeeze some game viewings in between his NATO meetings) to see which college basketball team is the best in the country.

Not into basketball? Well, then it’s an excuse to paint your face and drink beer on a weeknight. Not that you really needed an excuse…

Everyone is buzzing about the Presidente’s NCAA picks (UNC to go all the way?). Do you agree? Who do you think will take the title this year? Let out your school pride in the comments section below!