I understand that bracket-picking is a very important part of this process, and that March Madness would not be as important as it is without casual fans. If we were playing these games in front of the same number of people who were watching back in December, then there wouldn't be the anticipation, the excitement, the larger-than-life feeling this all has. All I want is market share. If just a few people come to our side, that's all that matters.

And among the millions of filled-out brackets, we have nine entries to our First Annual As-You-Go Bracket contest. The prize is roundtrip airfare for two to Indianapolis, the capital of Hoops Nation, and double-occupancy lodging at the site's headquarters (the gracefully fading Crowne Plaza Indianapolis Airport) for the Mid-Majority Season 7 Symposium in late summer. And that's plenty of entries enough, because it's a whole lot of JPG images to wrangle.

Here are your entries, and they are all amazing and wonderful and creative. Not to mention breathtakingly awesome. Because of that, we'd like to announce a change to the rules: I will not be able to decide, so we will put this to public vote (which will take place when the Epilogue is posted; winner will be announced on Twitter and in the site top bar). Remember that all entrants must provide a picture at the end of every round, until the last mid-major team is eliminated.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- I have a bobblehead doll of Bryce Drew releasing The Shot that beat Ole Miss in 1998, and a picture on my wall of Northwestern State's Jermaine Wallace uncorking the three-pointer that eliminated Iowa in 2006. I'll admit that I have to think for a minute to remember the names of their teammates, or which year it was, or what seed they were. As time passes, those details are more difficult to recall. The single symbol always replaces its context, as well as its meaning, as well as how it felt inside that moment.

In time, the games will fade from memory, leaving just traces behind: numbers and grids stacked in databases, trivia questions, paint-by-numbers feature stories with "stun" in the headlines, single spliced video moments edited into a grouped reel. Two hours will be distilled into two seconds. There was a Shot, or a demonstrative hug, or a happy blur of purple or green or yellow, and that's all that'll remind people that something happened, something important and powerful enough that the rush of adrenaline helped push some of the poison from our souls. A little thing beat a big thing, and such moments are still possible in a world like this.

There were six teams that survived Thursday that probably shouldn't have, whether it was because they were overmatched, overlooked or just underfinanced. Each victory stands for the idea that big things aren't necessarily best, and that drive and hunger and hope are still viable vessels for dreams. That's a deeply important message, one that goes all the way back to the Bible, and it resonates not only in Hoops Nation but across the entire country. It's why a lot of fans show up to join us in March, because they need this reminder of why and how America came about in the first place.

Due to unpopular demand, we are holding one-hour Chat Blocks every day this week. Here's the schedule (all times EDT): Monday at 3 pm, Tuesday at 2 pm, Wednesday at 1 pm, Thursday at 5 pm and Friday at 5 pm.

Thursday's Chat Block will be at 6 pm EDT because of the spillover length of the RMU-Villanova game.

As you probably know, Beth Ann Cosgrave and I wrote a book about this very day! We did it with the help of some friends, too. It's called Bally's Dream, and we'd like to dedicate it to Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Vermont, Lehigh and East Tennessee State, the No. 16 seeds who will be attempting to make history over the next two days.

Click on the pages to turn them!

And it's available for purchase! (Buying a copy helps kids, too.) We are sold out of our first run of the paperback, but another big box was ordered today. (In other words, please allow 1-2 weeks for delivery.) I've been getting messages about paperbacks arriving in happy places all across Hoops Nation, but my apologies to anyone who didn't receive it yet. It's coming, it's coming!

I just got word last night that the hardcover, on the other hand, was held up at the printer. It will be another 1-2 weeks for those to be delivered, but by that time the Tournament (or at least Season 6) will be over. So if you preordered, please watch your e-mail box for a list of options. We will make it right, and I humbly apologize for an unforseen mixup that was, ultimately, out of our control.

An important order of business! Dina S. from Charlotte won the drawing among preorderers for Bally No. 99. Congratulations, Dina! Your new orange friend will be along soon, yes!

To all, please enjoy this anticipatory day to the fullest... the feeling won't last forever. The next few days will be full of heartbreak, unmet expectations and missed chances -- but with a few moments of victory mixed in to remind us all of the possibilities. Right now, though, all 25 Tournament dreams are alive, and each team has a chance.

Due to unpopular demand, we are holding one-hour Chat Blocks every day this week. Here's the schedule (all times EDT): Monday at 3 pm, Tuesday at 2 pm, Wednesday at 1 pm, Thursday and Friday at 5 pm.

And don't forget about our bracket contest!

DAYTON, Ohio -- Just the word "playoffs" tightens heart muscles, bates breaths, causes sleepless and nervous palpitations. Fans can't wait for the fun to begin. In the professional ranks of American-Style Football, "wild card weekend" is the start of a month of lost weekends. ALDS and NLCS and conference quarterfinals... this is the terminology of anticipation.

At the NCAA Tournament, not so much. Because of the airport handshakes that split the Mountain West from the WAC a decade ago, the first day of the Big Dance is not Thursday but Tuesday. There's an extra game necessary to break 65 down to 64, and this is the true first day of the playoffs. This Play-In Game, this P.I.G., is supposed to be an explosion of excitement, the first day of March Madness, the kickoff of the fourth and final chapter of our beautiful season.

"Be honest with me," I said to University of Dayton SID Doug Hauschild, who oversees media at the 10-year-old event. "Other than the locals, and the folks from Winthrop and Arkansas-Pine Bluff, how many out-of-town journalists are here today?"

"There's an AP radio guy from Cincinnati, I don't know if you'd count him," Doug replied. "But really, you're it."

So I feel a strong obligation to share the story of Arkansas-Pine Bluff's historic and groundbreaking NCAA win over Winthrop, because, apparently, no other faraway media felt this game was important enough to make the trip to watch it.

This, my friends, is the story of former MMBOW Gordon "Spankmaster" Hayward of Butler, who went under alter ego "G-Time" for this studio session (hey, Kool Keith has about 10 names), and laid down some SMAC RAP about what's going to happen over the next three weeks.

But to remove this masterpiece from the internet, to deny that something like "Too Big Yo" ever existed, is like dropping a triple-double in a game and trying to convince the world that it never happened. And science has proven that there is nothing more funny than white guys from Indiana rapping, right? So here, then, thanks to the magic of intertron technology, is the surviving audio. Ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't matter if you are a Butler fan or not, this is our anthem for the 2010 Big Dance. (Spank comes in at the 1:50 mark.)

"Too big" ups to TMM hero Mike Miller, who tipped us off to this in the first place.

Due to unpopular demand, we are holding one-hour Chat Blocks every day this week. Here's the schedule (all times EDT): Monday at 3 pm, Tuesday at 2 pm, Wednesday at 1 pm, Thursday and Friday at 5 pm.

And don't forget about our bracket contest!

Due to unpopular demand, we are holding one-hour Chat Blocks every day this week. Here's the schedule (all times EDT): Monday at 3 pm, Tuesday at 2 pm, Wednesday at 1 pm, Thursday and Friday at 5 pm.

And don't forget about our bracket contest!

INDIANAPOLIS -- I see you printing out that CBS blank bracket at work, starting to fill it out in pencil. (You like Murray State's chances for the upset, I see.) I noticed that you'd opened a Fantasy account at ESPN,com, getting ready to fill out 10 different contingency entries. (But you're definitely hedging those bets on Murray State, aren't you?) Seriously, just stop right there. Don't do it. Sure, it's a shared experience with all your friends and online buddies, but stop. Do not enter the contest. There is a better way.

I have not filled out the complete six rounds of a bracket, in advance, for seven years. Growing up, I never filled the whole thing in. Two years ago, in this space, I put forward my reasoning why you shouldn't enter your office pool. I never fully understood why secretaties and cubicle dwellers and sportz junkies are so adamant about proving their ability to see the future, especially when most of them haven't seen enough of the past-in-context to have any sort of real perspective. And Bracket Whining Syndrome (BWS) is a national March menace, the disorder that causes people to say things like "Awwww man, my bracket got busted by [fill in the 11 seed]." (Side effects include bystanders experiencing strong urges to kick BWS sufferers in the Pants Region.)

I've always believed that March Madness is more fun, and more mad, when the games are simply enjoyed for what they are -- individual pieces of America's most spectacular and dramatic sporting event. Putting myself in the middle of things, selfishly rooting for teams because a win would give me a certain number of pool points, detracted from that experience. And in the early days before The Mid-Majority, I ran into a rare fellow with whom I found bracket simpatico.

Here, Hoops Nation, are your champions. A majority of them won the "marathon" of the regular season. Some didn't. But all survived a March test in miniature, a series of one-and-done games where a loss meant long nights of cold sweat, mentally organizing lists of positive accomplishments, and the real possibility of being sent to a March tournament without office pools. But these teams, pictured below, are ready to do life-or-death battle this week, because they recognize the challenge, and have risen to it.

For most of these teams, the happy moments pictured here will be the last of their kind. They will find their dreams shredded by superior teams. For some of them, this is only the beginning. But all of them are champions, and that's the word that's going on the banners in their home gyms. Here they all are, pictured alongside diagrams and maps of the paths they took to arrive in the Tournament, the bridges between their dreams and their NCAA reality.

Happy Selection Sunday, the day when Christmas morning comes at 6 pm.

• Seven championships were decided on the penultimate day of Championship Fortnight. All hail Vermont, back in the Dance for the first time since 2005 (Season 1) and also for the first time in the Mike Lonergan era. Congratulations to Morgan State; the Bears navigated the always-difficult MEAC tourney to repeat as titlists. We salute UC Santa Barbara, which hadn't won the Big West tourney title since 2002. Sam Houston State, consistently one of the best teams in the Southland, broke through in the tourney for the first time since 2003.
  
• Congrats, as well, to the surprise winners. The Ohio Bobcats completed a stunning run through the MAC tourney as a No. 9 seed, defeating Akron in overtime to claim that school's first Dance card since Season 1. New Mexico State had to knock off the top two seeds to win the WAC, but the Red Aggies completed the task late last night.
  
• And a special hoorah is in order to yesterday's first-time dancers: Arkansas-Pine Bluff of the SWAC, just five years removed from winning a single game out of 27.
  
• And, of course: well done, South Dakota, which won the first-ever Great West championship and will now play in a lesser postseason tournament.
  
• Chaos into order in just 12 days. Two weeks ago, there were 247 teams with NCAA dreams. Now there are 22. A few of the runner-ups will sneak through the Selection Committee's side door, but the champions of Hoops Nation won their bids on the floor, but defeating any and all comers. We salute each and every one of them.
  
• Today at approximately 3:00 p.m. Eastern time, either Richmond or Temple will be the Atlantic One, and Championship Fortnight will be complete.