The Longhorn Road Trip just got a whole lot longer. Thanks to the genius of the the NCAA Selection Committee, Texas — a “protected” four seed — will be playing its first two rounds over 2,000 miles from home, with a possible Sweet 16 date in East Rutherford, New Jersey their reward for a pair of victories.

Does anybody actually know anything about Spokane, Washington? Or have any tips of what to see along the way? I’m guessing there won’t be a whole hell of a lot once we get past Denver, but looking at mountains for 891 straight hours ought to be grand. If you’ve got any sights or restaurants for us to check out, feel free to leave them below in the comments.

Honestly, the entire Big 12 got shafted by the committee. A&M is a 3-seed that gets sent to Lexington, while Memphis gets sent to New Orleans as a 2-seed? Why aren’t the Tigers close to home in Lexington while the Aggies play closer to home in Nawlins? And that doesn’t even address the fact that A&M could end up playing Louisville in the second round, only 75 miles down I-64 from the UL campus.

Then Kansas is given a 1-seed, but is rewarded with a regional where 2-seed UCLA gets to play only five hours from home? I realize that the top seeds are only supposed to be protected in the first two rounds — unless, apparently you’re a top four seed from the state of Texas — but is preserving the S-curve so important that a 1-seed should get jobbed that badly?

Why not ship UCLA to the San Antonio regional and send Memphis out to the San Jose regional? I’m assuming, of course, that the S-curve held perfectly for these top eight seeds. If that’s so, you’ve got the overall third-best team (Ohio State) playing the fifth-best team (UCLA) if chalk holds to the Elite Eight, while the fourth-best team (Kansas) gets the sixth-best (Memphis) and no top seeds are absolutely screwed by road games in the second weekend.

That’s enough bitching for now. At least Texas has two winnable games in front of them. We’ll be driving to Spokane on Wednesday and Thursday, so there will likely be few updates to the website in the middle of the week. A preview of the New Mexico State Aggies should be coming on Thursday night once we arrive at the hotel.