March Madness, also known as the NCAA Division I basketball tournament, has kicked off to its usual fanfare of games galore and everybody wondering if the brackets they filled out are going to pay off in their respective pools.

Therefore, I'm not going to talk about Barry Bonds, although the New York Daily News reported Thursday that an unidentified baseball official said Commissioner Bud Selig has decided to investigate allegations that Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs for at least five seasons. But enough about Bonds.

Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the 11th seed in the Minneapolis Regional, upset sixth-seeded Oklahoma 82-74 on Thursday. Milwaukee made a run to the round of 16 last year under coach Bruce Pearl, now at Tennessee.

UCLA, the No. 2 seed in the Oakland Regional, made short work of 15th-seeded Belmont on Thursday, 78-44. Freshman Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (you have to love that name) had 17 points, eight rebounds and six assists and UCLA routed the small Nashville school.

Bonds is accused in the upcoming book, "Game of Shadows," of using steroids, human growth hormone, insulin and other drugs, which apparently helped him shatter the single-season home run record with 73 long balls in 2001. Mark McGwire held the record of 70 hit in 1998, and if you believe Jose Canseco, McGwire wasn't exactly Mr. Clean himself, but McGwire doesn't like to talk about the past. Ask Congress. They'll tell you. And here I am digressing about Bonds again. Darn it.

So, Pearl's second-seeded Tennessee team got a scare from 15th-seeded Winthrop, which gave the Volunteers all they could handle Thursday before falling 63-61. I got to watch most of that game before coming in to work, and I was rooting for the upset.

That's what is great about the tournament. Almost anybody can beat anybody, and upsets happen every day.

And Selig said he's just being "cautious" about investigating Bonds, waiting for the prosecutors in the BALCO case to perhaps charge the Giants slugger with perjury for his grand jury testimony in 2003.

Anybody with an ounce of sense now knows that Bonds had to have taken steroids and did so knowingly, contrary to what he might have said to the grand jury.

I guess it's just impossible to ignore the Bonds situation at this point. I'm sorry, I tried.

Enjoy the basketball games, because the Madness only comes around once a year. The Bonds story is going to be here for quite some time, it sounds like.