Mid-Major Madness Year in Review: The Mid-Major 5 Dominate ESPN's Talking Heads

Here I was sitting in my living room one cold February morning and ESPN decided to really treat me. They had Digger Phelps, Jay Bilas and Jalen Rose, all pick fantasy teams of five players whose stats would be tracked until Selection Sunday.

We watched as the picks rolled off the board, with high profile names, and multiple players from the same team. It was like none of these guys had ever participated in a fantasy draft before.

Sure, you can pick a big name player, but make sure he has the consistent stats every game and that his teammates aren't going to cannibalize him. That gave us our favorite #theyredoingitwrong moment of the year.

Perhaps the only head on the panel who got the concept (and the concept is to win, and win by showing that you know more about college basketball than any of your fellow panelists, not just picking the flashy names), was Jalen Rose.

Rose picked both Doug McDermott, who as you saw could dominate a game, and Isaiah Canaan: two solid mid-major players who were going to get the bulk of the scoring and other numbers used in the calculation.

It is no wonder that Rose ended up the winner and forced his fellow talking heads to wear Michigan jerseys as punishment.

Only Rose didn't win, because we put together a starting five of our own and dominated the three ESPN experts so badly that at the end of the season, we were at least 100 points ahead of them (final scores were never actually announced by the WWL). It should also be no shock that the actual fantasy picks were not tracked online anywhere on the ESPN site. Too much potential embarrassment since they got licked by our starting five:

• Mike Muscala
• Jerrelle Benimon
• Zeke Marshall
• Nate Wolters
• Ray McCallum