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A recent study has found that sports announcers are able to believe what they are seeing.

Over the past five years, sports announcers have displayed a marked increase in their ability to accept the evidence of their eyes and find the sporting efforts they witness "entirely credible," a study published Wednesday concluded. "In the past, sportscasters were like newborn infants, assuming each running catch or 28-point performance was outside the realm of possibility," said Cornell University researcher Karen Thaler, who noted that "wow's" and "oh-my's" have recently hit all-time lows. "It appears they are now able to contextualize an event within the long and varied history of team sports that came before it. Today's basketball announcers won't even say that a jump shot is taken from 'downtown' unless the player is 40 feet away from the hoop." When asked to comment on these findings, ESPN's Dick Vitale replied with a calm and even "that sounds about right."

Mid-majors should be taken seriously.

When Ali Farokhmanesh hit his game-winning shot to lift ninth-seed Northern Iowa over top-ranked Kansas last Saturday, it was a true Cinderella moment for the NCAA Tournament, a rare second-round knockout of a high-major opponent by a scrappy, fundamentally sound mid-major semi-upper-lower-middle-mid.

But when the dust of the weekend had cleared, and Xavier, Butler, Cornell, and St. Mary's had all advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, it sent a clear message to the entire NCAA: The era of the mid-major semi-upper-lower-middle-mid had truly begun.

"What people are seeing here, once they get past the excitement of a sub-upper-major team like Georgetown losing to a moderate-mid-minor like Ohio, is increased parity across the board," Northern Iowa coach Ben Jacobson said. "In the second round, everyone saw how minor mid-sub-major Cornell handled neo-mid-half-major Wisconsin. In the first, they saw how major mid-minor Xavier trounced semi-high-major Minnesota. And now they're starting to wonder exactly what to call us."

Eleven different conferences are represented in this year's Sweet Sixteen, which pitted high-scoring para-mid-semi-diminished-sub-mid-major Cornell against the tournament's top seed and its top-ranked remaining team, major-major-major-major Kentucky.

"Kentucky is a major-major-major-major basketball school, no two ways about it," Cornell senior Jon Jaques wrote on his blog Wednesday. "We may be a low-mid-upper-mid-downer-middle-mid-micro-submacro school from upstate New York, but we've never let it hold us back. When the Big Dance is over, I wouldn't be surprised to see people calling Cornell a mid-upper-parallel-medial, or even a para-demi-duo-double major. I think we've proved something to the world."

Cornell drained the fun out of their Cinderella run.

A rich guy is feeling left out of the recession.

It's just not fair," said the 49-year-old real estate developer and grandson of oil baron Duncan Chandler. "Everyone is worrying about an uncertain future and coming together to express their outrage, and I don't get to be a part of it."

Staring out at the ornate garden where workers were installing a large marble fountain, Chandler sighed and added, "It's like I don't even exist."

According to the multimillionaire, the past 18 months have been incredibly difficult to endure, as he is often left feeling excluded from an American populace that includes millions who struggle every day to make ends meet. Chandler, who watched helplessly as his enormous fortune easily withstood the market freefall, has been "completely left out" of one of this nation's most significant cultural moments.

"Everybody's suffering," Chandler said. "And here I am, not scrimping and saving at all, with no demoralizing periods of financial hardship, or frantic weeks living paycheck to paycheck. What about me, you know? Where's my struggle?"

"Everyone's supposed to get a fair shake at this misery," Chandler added. "Even incredibly wealthy people of privilege like me."

Throughout the economic downturn, Chandler has tried to tap into the recession and experience some of the sorrow and widespread desperation he has so cruelly been denied. Sadly, all of his attempts have been thwarted by his seemingly insurmountable stack of riches.

President Obama has proposed cutting the United States Senate to save money in the United States budget.

The nation is prepared to be depressed during this weekend's Final Four.

Shots of the Indianapolis skyline scheduled to air during the 2010 Final Four will be extremely depressing and will momentarily infuse viewers with a sense of overwhelming bleakness, the U.S. populace reported this week.