March Madness Opens with Bomb Scare

As I was driving around San Diego County this morning, I heard the local media talking about the bomb scare at the Cox Arena:

The arena for the first-round NCAA men's tournament game between Alabama and Marquette was temporarily evacuated Thursday after bomb-sniffing dogs found a suspicious package about two hours before tipoff.

The dogs detected the package inside a 4-by-6-inch condiment container in a vendor cart outside Cox Arena at San Diego State University. A bomb robot was sent to the scene, FBI spokeswoman Jan Caldwell said.

The all-clear was given about two hours later and fans were to be allowed in once security staff took their posts inside the arena, university spokesman Jack Beresford said. He did not know any details about the container. A new start time for the game would be the NCAA's decision, he said.

It turns out that it was nothing serious (in fact there was one report that the mysterious box contained hot dog condiments - maybe the bomb dog was hungry). According to the reporters on scene, everybody handled the situation pretty calmly and with pretty good humor. Hopefully, the rest of the tournament can go on without anymore of this kind of excitement.