Casual

...It was once said of Vitale, rightly, that "he doesn't broadcast games, he broadsides them...

...But a couple of wins by teams with low seeds add up to a lot of points...

...I could justify it back then because I'd matched up against some of these guys at summer camps—never with any success, I might add—and because as a college freshman I didn't have anything better to do...

...MATTHEW REES...

...This year's studio hosts, Greg Gumbel and Clark Kellogg, have the combined personality of a mailbox.That said, by mid-January I've usually started pining for the tournament to begin...

...I also look forward to the tournament because it's an occasion for sportswriters to trot out some of their most hackneyed, but hilarious, lines...

...That's what happened to me two years ago when, on a lark, I picked Valparaiso, Rhode Island, and Washington...

...But I'll be there to the bitter end—watching CBS's sappy "One Shining Moment" video montage has become a painful annual tradition—knowing that every March to come holds out hope for just a little more madness, and a little more money...

...And at tournament time, I miss Vitale...

...Heroic efforts notwithstanding, I've never again succeeded at watching 12 hours of college basketball a day for four days straight...

...Maybe it has to do with memories of past games: Tate George taking a full-court pass and hitting a shot at the buzzer to propel the University of Connecticut into the Final Four in 1990, or the University of Michigan's Rumeal Robinson throwing down a reverse, double-pump dunk in the 1989 championship game against Seton Hall...

...A work-in-progress is invariably "the biggest project since the filming of Titanic...

...I still recall the upset of Illinois by Austin Peay— rhymes with she—because of the school's cheeky cheer: "Let's go Peay...

...Suffice to say, I'm not in the money this year...

...And I felt right at home once ESPN's motor-mouth analyst Dick Vitale began his extended commentaries...

...But in recent years I, like just about every other red-blooded American male, have been lured into spending $5 or $10 on an NCAA tournament pool...

...Of a shot-blocker, they'll write that he's "responsible for more rejects than Harvard Law School...

...And someone who scores in the clutch "treats his opponents like a baby treats a diaper...

...Friends asked me to join them in Jamaica, and having just endured my first Connecticut winter, I pounced at the invitation...

...Thus a one seed who wins the tournament produces a paltry six points...

...There's one other reason—slightly less pure—why the tournament gets my juices flowing: money...

...Complicating matters is that I've come upon an unorthodox pool— devised by California basketball guru Matt Steinhaus—in which entrants pick one team from each of the 16 seeds, with points awarded based on each team's performance: A one seed gets one point for every win, a two seed two points, etc...

...I won't bother trying to predict who will play in this year's final game, much less who will win it...

...To my continuing amazement, I walked off with first prize...

...And owing to the pool's twisted calculus, I found myself rooting against North Caroli-na—a school I've always liked— because they were a number eight seed, and their victories would benefit others in the pool and thus penalize me...

...Within minutes, I'd plopped myself in front of the overhead TV, and there I stayed for most of the next four days, nursing ice-cold Red Stripes and fending off the jeers of my friends, as ESPN skipped around the country to show what seemed to be one nail-biter finish after another...

...It didn't take long for me to snap out of my doldrums, though, as a stroll through Ocho Rios turned up my Xanadu: a seaside, open-air bar televising the opening two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament...

...But by the time we arrived, I wasn't so sanguine about the week ahead: I'd forgotten my passport—customs admitted me on the basis of a voter registration card and a few green-skins—and I'd heard too many horror stories about crummy beaches, warm Red Stripe beer, and incessant solicitations from natives peddling ganja and dashikis...

...I rarely bet on sports, or much of anything else, because I find the pain of losing to be twice as great as the pleasure of winning...

...Today, I can't always get excited about games in which most of the players were born in the 1980s and all seem to have upper arms tattooed with witchcraft symbols...

...This year, I scrutinized the pairings with a diamond-cutter's attention to detail, but I got dogged by picking Indiana—a perennial early loser—and not UCLA, which has a weak coach but phenomenal talent (as Maryland learned the hard way...