Although the play-in game was held on Tuesday, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament kicks off in earnest on Thursday.
This year, there are more high-tech ways than ever to enter and run pools and to make sure you don’t miss a minute of the action.
Brackets and pools
Pretty much every sports related web site you can think of let’s you enter and run tournament pools. Some of the most popular ones are offered by ESPN.com, Yahoo, and CBS Sportsline.
If you use Facebook, CBS Sports has an application that lets you participate in a pool from inside Facebook. Other companies are also offering bracket applications in Facebook.
Most pools require all entries to be in before the first game tips off on Thursday at 12:20 p.m. eastern time.
If you are running a pool, I would suggest creating a spreadsheet in Google Docs & Spreadsheets to keep track of the standings. Doing this will allow you to update the spreadsheet from any computer with an Internet connection and easily share it with others or publish it to the web.
Following the action at work
Your best bet is to sign up for March Madness on Demand, so you can watch all of the games for free on your computer. For instructions, check out this How 2 item I wrote recently on the service.
Free TV and movie service Joost, is also offering live streaming coverage of every game, though you have to download a program to watch and Joost warns that since it is testing this service, the company expects things to go wrong.
If your employer, blocks access to these services, you can always track the scores at a number of sites, including ESPN, CBS Sportsline and Yahoo Sports. Many cell phone companies, sports sites and other sites are also offering free text message alerts. One site that is offering text message alerts is 4info.net.

blogs.orlandosentinel.com

If you happen to be a Michigan State fan who bought tickets months ago with the idea of watching your beloved Spartans in Detroit, and now you can’t believe you whipped out all that cash to watch somebody else’s teams … then the NCAA is so, so sorry, but please remember that this tournament isn’t about money, anyway. It’s about academics, of course.
This brings us to the fine group of scholar-athletes who might visit Ford Field next week to further their education and, in the words of William Butler Yeats, “dunk on each other’s butts.”
You still can see some great hoops at Ford Field.
Then again, you might see Wisconsin-Georgetown.
Now, we should point out here that Wisconsin and Georgetown are very good basketball teams. This is part of the problem: They are very good because they stop other teams from doing fun things.
Wisconsin leads the nation in scoring defense. Georgetown leads the nation in field-goal percentage defense.
Wisconsin’s opponents score 54 points a game, and Georgetown’s opponents average 58 — and those opponents are usually trying to speed up the pace. If the Badgers and Hoyas face each other, nobody will be trying to run.
This would continue Wisconsin’s long, storied history of ugly tournament games. It doesn’t matter who coaches Wisconsin — Dick Bennett or Bo Ryan or Barry Alvarez.
Why is this? My theory is that people in Wisconsin don’t care if you think their basketball team plays an ugly style, because it’s their team. They feel the same way about the football team, the only top-25 squad in the country that prides itself on chubby ballcarriers.
After all, did you sit in the cold for all those years cheering for 2-9 football teams? Did you crowd into UW Fieldhouse to watch the Badgers get crushed by Indiana every year? No? Then stop whining.
Besides, the state’s two chief exports are cheese and beer — two reasons to love Wisconsin, in my book, but these are not exactly performance-enhancing drugs.
The other semifinal, Kansas-Clemson, could be the game of the tournament.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The idiocy in that previous sentence is breathtaking. First of all, how does anybody know Kansas will even make the second round? The Jayhawks hold the modern-day NCAA record for Banana Peels Slipped On. Clemson is the No. 5 seed, for the love of God. Who assumes a No. 5 seed will make it to the Sweet 16?)

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