Don't bother today, nothing's getting done anyway

It has become a tradition for me to take two days in March and chalk them up to wasted time.

The first two days of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament you might as well not bother me, because I will not be getting much done anyway.

That is because I get a condition called March Madness. I get it so bad it hurts.

I have my brackets ready, my money wasted in pools of polls.

I sit in front of the television and watch the various first-round games.

I watch the televised games, this season from Indianapolis, Cleveland, Tucson and Boise.

I watch the live cut-ins, the annoying commentary and my favorite part of the tournament -- the upsets.

Upsets are the lifeblood of the tournament. Upsets are what make sporting events so fun to watch.

The NCAA Tournament is the only major postseason event where you are guaranteed to see some upsets.

It is not a question of if, it is a question of when.

When will the 12-seed beat the 5-seed? It happens on average 1.3 times each year. So one of the four teams currently seeded fifth statistically will not make it to the second round. Which one will it be? Alabama, Villanova, Georgia Tech and Michigan State, one of you will be out of the tournament before Saturday.

When will the 13-seed beat the 4-seed? That happens almost once each year. In fact, 16 times in the past 20 years a 13-seed has beaten a 4-seed.

This means that Syracuse, Louisville, Boston College and Florida had better all be on their games or else they could be on the outside looking in.

What about the 14-seed? There have been 13 wins by a 14-seed over a 3-seed in the past 20 years.

It is true that a 16-seed has never beaten a 1-seed, and that only four 15-seeds have beaten a 2-seed in the past 20 tournaments.

But those are the top teams in the country against some of the luckiest, not-so-good teams from bad conferences. Nobody expects the lower seeds to win those games anyway.

But figure this, if you throw in the 21 wins by 11-seeds over 6-seeds, since 1985 there have been 80 wins that can be classified as true upsets.

We're not counting 10-seeds over 7-seeds, and we're not counting 9-seeds over 8-seeds because often you can argue that those teams were seeded wrong in the first place.

So if there have been 80 true upsets during the past 20 NCAA Tournaments in the first round alone, that gives us an average of four upsets per season.

We're not even including the second-round upsets, which are often as plentiful (and just as fun to watch) as the first round.

That is why I invite you to do as I will be doing for the next two days. Sit back, enjoy the refreshing beverages of your choice, and watch the most entertaining event in all of sports.

Sure you still have to put up with listening to Dick Vitale and Digger Phelps, but it is a small price to pay.

Information from ESPN.com was used in this column.