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I’ve had enough of Alec Baldwin (see right).

Recently, I mentioned that the “30 Rock” star was the new Betty White because he seemed to be everywhere – on TV, on awards shows and on commercials.

I don’t knew who was more annoying over the first weekend of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament – Alec or Charles Barkley.

Baldwin seemed to pop up in a bank advertisement after every timeout.

After awhile, it made me want to shout – and not it in the cheerful way that Bills fans do after a touchdown.

Barkley just popped up at the half or after games. He was annoying because he picked on my favorite conference and turned out to be right.

At every chance he could, Barkley belittled the Big East by calling the conference the Small East, the Big Easy, the Itty Bitty East or something as insulting.

Amusingly, he referred to the Big East as the “most over-rated conference in the world.”

“What are the better conferences in other countries?” asked teammate Greg Anthony.

That prompted Barkley and his television teammates to have fun with the conferences in other countries.

Then Big East teams went out and stumbled. The only two out of the 11 that made it to the Sweet 16 – Connecticut and Marquette – played other Big East teams to qualify.

Ouch.

Barkley’s comments hurt even more because you got the sense he couldn’t name 10 college players. He is sort of the new Al McGuire, an entertaining guy who has good basketball instincts even if he doesn’t study lineups.

One of Barkley’s other major pronouncements during the weekend came when he and TNT teammate Kenny Smith belittled Syracuse’s fabled zone defense. He and Smith essentially said the zone was a product of the media and could be easily solved. In other words, Coach Jim Boeheim’s 856 career victories counted for nothing in this analysis.

It sounded pretty foolish even if this Syracuse fan wishes Boeheim would switch to a man-to-man defense occasionally when teams are burying their outside shots.

Barkley is a man of big statements so naturally he isn’t always right. Before the Duke-Michigan game, Barkley boldly predicted Michigan was too young to beat Duke. The Wolverines came within a five-foot shot of sending the game into overtime, illustrating that youth and inexperience aren’t such a big problem on the basketball court when you can drain 3’s.

It was no more of a problem than Barkley’s inexperience covering college hoop.

After all, he is an entertainer and he entertained. After the dull head of officiating with the presidential name, John Adams,  came on to defend some crazy controversial fouls called in the final 9 seconds of Butler’s win over Pittsburgh, Barkley made fun of the guy’s blandness.

“What is his job?” he asked. “My daughter could have said that. He is a very nice guy. Those were two very bad plays. They were fouls.”

Then there was the moment that cameras caught a grown man wearing a Spider-man outfit at a Richmond Spiders game as he sat next to his wife and son.

“He’s saying my dad’s a damn idiot,” cracked Barkley of the son. “A grown man wearing a Spider outfit. The only good thing about that is we couldn’t see his face.”

Now it is time for some more Itty Bitty comments from a blogger who once thought he could never see too much basketball or too much of Alec Baldwin.

* Butler Coach Brad Stevens is the classiest coach in the world. When asked about the final foul call that led to his team’s win over Pitt, Stevens was almost apologetic about it. He said he felt bad for Pitt but would have felt just as bad for Butler if it lost because of a previous questionable call. I’m rooting for Stevens the rest of the way.

* How in the world did Syracuse not land BYU guard Jimmer Fredette? After all, the guy played just down the road in Glens Falls. I do vaguely remember hearing during a previous game that Boeheim didn’t recuit him because he landed Niagara Falls star Jonny Flynn. But Flynn left for the NBA after his sophomore year. After watching him smoke Gonzaga, one couldn’t help but wonder what Fredette would have looked like in a Syracuse uniform.

* Here are eight words I dread hearing during action. “Now let’s go to sideline reporter Marty  Snider.” Snider rarely tells viewers anything they don’t know or can’t see.

* It was nice of the announcers on all the networks covering the tournament to tell viewers that closer games were ending on other channels if they wanted to switch away for a few minutes. Gus Johnson advised viewers watching Syracuse-Marquette that it would be a good time to switch to the Arizona-Texas game just in time to see Zona escape with a one-point win.

* If you’re like me, you saw more of truTV this weekend than you have all year and can’t wait to see the next episode of the heavily-promoted reality series “Hardcore Pawn.”

If you ask me, truTV was the big winner of the weekend because of all the promotion it got to attract a male audience to its series.

* Does anyone know what channel Thursday and Friday’s regional semifinals will be on?

pergament@msn.com

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