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are announced, each is assigned a "seed" between 1 and 16 and assigned to one of the four regionals: East, West, Midwest and South. By Sunday evening, you have the ability to enter national on-line pools, local pools run by friends and co-workers, most of whom you will only see occasionally for the next few weeks, and perhaps even a few "old school" players that may hand out actual sheets of paper for you to fill in with your selections.

Typically, you will fill out the entire grid, working your way through each round until you arrive at an ultimate champion and will have until noon or so of the following Thursday to submit your entries. Then, the fun begins.

HOW DO WE ENJOY THE TOURNAMENT AND OUR POOLS: Finally, for those of you veterans polite enough to still be reading, some specific and hopefully helpful information.

Viewing-wise, you need access to the DirecTV Mega March Madness ("MMM") package, not overly expensive if you already have the service, about $69 or so; if you do not possess a dish, research your local Sports Bars, most will have it. At this point, the other thing you need is Free Wi-Fi access in the Sports Bar of your choosing, as your ideal situation should be to find a comfortable table where you can spread out a laptop to check scores, perhaps do some on-line wagering and in general, just stay informed. If you're at home, chances are you may not leave the house for a day or two, so make sure you have all of your supplies handy: snacks, beverages of your choice and most likely ordering information for several local pizza places.

If you are out and about, you will have a long day in front of you - my suggestion and the extent of my public service announcement is seriously consider taking a taxi back from your spot after the first day if you are consuming a few beers or more; if nothing else, you can grab a friend or cab it back the following day to get your vehicle as, if you stayed all day, the bug has bitten you and you will be back. Enjoy yourself without taking unnecessary risks.

One note if you are at home, you will ideally have two TV's in your main viewing room, as you will need to watch the locally available game through your normal cable feed, with that game otherwise blacked out on the satellite package. Occasionally, the networks may switch away from a local game, the MMM package providers are fairly current on making the changes on their end so that all games can be viewed at any time.

Aside from the MMM package, which is a joint venture

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