I know, it's been a while since I've blogged. I just can't seem to keep up with the pace of my buddy Patrick Stevens over at the D1Scourse blog, who, I should point out, got 64 of 65 teams correct in his NCAA Tournament projection. ESPN's Joe Lunardi and Jerry Palm at Collegerpi.com were perfect, but they're not doing projections on top of writing game stories and features and traveling. Patrick gets the nod for having a higher strength of schedule, so to speak.

My Final Four projection (at the moment) for anyone who cares, is: Louisville, Kansas, Memphis and UCLA. I like Purdue and West Virginia as major conference sleepers and see Siena over Vandy as the biggest first round upset. I also think UMBC could give Georgetown a game.

Ok, onto the world of sport biz. Some ballpark budget numbers! Accountants, rejoice!

The latest budget report for the stadium came out last week, and it shows no surprises. The latest budget pegs the cost of the project at $673,603,097, broken down as follows:
Hard costs (materials and labor): $320 million
Soft costs (things like insurance and permit fees): $175,121,815
Land and Environmental Cleanup: $154,769,802

The above number includes the $20 million that the team was required to contribute in the lease agreement. The Nationals have contributed an additional $11,392,750, with $7,615,650 going toward hard costs.

At the moment, the city remains under the D.C. Council's cap on hard and soft costs. (The cap is $495,184,218, leaving just $63,000 to play around with. But, there's still $11 million left in contingency. So there's no real danger of busting the cap.)

The cost of land and environmental remediation was not capped, but is currently $43,154,020 over budget. Land alone has cost about $33 million more than estimates.

-- Tim Lemke