Even though George Mason missed the NCAA tournament entirely this year, the Colonials deserve a lot of the credit (or blame) for how the first couple of rounds of the tournament played out. It's clear now that in their run to the Final Four last season, George Mason used up just about all the magic Cinderella had to offer.

This year's bracket busters never had a chance to surprise the big name teams and ruin brackets across the country. No seed lower than seven advanced to the second round this year (George Mason was an 11 during their Final Four run), and UNLV, the seventh seed in the Midwest, is the lowest-seeded team to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. In a time of the year defined by upsets, this comes as quite a shock.

Sure, there have been glimpses this season of the upsets and surprise performances that have typically made March so mad. Winthrop, after campaigning heavily for a higher seed, scored a first-round upset win over Notre Dame, in a well-played but mostly unentertaining game. For a while it looked like Davidson might beat Maryland, but the Wildcats fell apart down the stretch, and high seeds Wisconsin and Texas A&M survived first round scares from Texas A&M Corpus Christi and Penn. The only true memorable upset came when Virginia Commonwealth upset Duke in the first round on Eric Maynor's jumper with the game clock about to expire, knocking off the Blue Devils to delight of many fans. Other than Maynor's shot, the first four days of tournament action lacked a marquee moment — a highlight to be replayed every March for years to come — and with no low seeds advancing to the Sweet 16, fans won't see an underdog pull off an historic win this postseason.

As much as it seems like this lack of upsets goes against the trends of March Madness, this is the way the world works. Miracles aren't a regular occurrence, even in March. For every replay of Bryce Drew sinking Ole Miss with his buzzer beating 3-pointer, CBS should play one of Tennessee dropping 121 points in their blowout of a Long Beach State team that was supposed to be capable of an upset. Logic tells us that the better teams are supposed to win, and that No. 12s aren't supposed to beat No. 5s — no matter how good bracketologists think Old Dominion is or how easy beating Virginia Tech might be. Like it or not, the favorites are supposed to win, and tournaments like this year's serve as a reminder of that fact.

Without the favorites advancing with ease this year, and nobody filling Cinderella's slipper, tournaments like last year's become even more special. Watching a three seed absolutely trounce their first round opponent now makes it all that much sweeter when looking back on 14 seed upsets of years pasts and will make it more impressive when they inevitably happen in the future.

Sometimes, the best teams need to win just to prove there is such a thing as an upset. If two 12 seeds always upset two fives, doesn't that detract from the magnitude of the upset? Picking upsets in your bracket is always more enjoyable when the upsets are unexpected and come from seemingly out of nowhere. Being correct about a 13 seed upsetting a four isn't all that exciting when half the people in your pool made the same pick. With so few upsets in the first two rounds of this year's tournament, you can be sure that next year more brackets will feature more favorites advancing, setting the stage for massive gloating when someone correctly picks a hidden Cinderella.

Now, with two rounds down and half the field eliminated, the tournament can take one of two paths.

First, the tournament can make up for a lack of earlier upsets, by throwing a couple of late curveballs our way. Southern Illinois can make a run to the Final Four, along with Vanderbilt and UNLV. All of a sudden, No. 1 seeds can start to fall and interviews with the tearful Greg Oden and Joakim Noah types can run on SportsCenter. The same experts who told you Oral Roberts was going to beat Washington State will tell you how dangerous they thought USC was all along and how Vanderbilt's Derrick Byars was the kind of guy who could take over a tournament. And, it would be a lot of fun; together fans would tear up their brackets and once again curse Kansas for falling short, and we'd awe at the fans who somehow correctly picked all four finalists. That's the first path, and while it seems unlikely this season, it could certainly happen.

The second is that a true upset occurs. For the first time since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, we can see all four No. 1 seeds advance. The four best teams in the country can finally get together in the season's final challenge to determine a champion free of controversy and what-ifs. We can watch as the experts say they were right and be telling the truth for once, and we can watch as at least three or four people in every pool, probably those you'd least expect, pick the final four correctly. We can watch what happens when Goliath takes David's slingshot and beats him over the head with it. And then we can watch as four Goliaths meet in the same building to determine the absolute best team in college basketball this season. Talk about madness.