It's time to live above the rim

Bill Lyon is a retired Inquirer columnist

Here it comes now, The Big Dance, the Great Dribble and Dunking Tent Revival, the Ultimate Office Pool, its triumphant brassy arrival announced by the pep bands with their blaring horns and the drummers with their machine-gunning sticks; with the cheerleaders, perpetually perky and utterly indefatigable and frighteningly fearless, catapulted to the rafters; while down below, out of the tunnels come the players, those tree-top-tall sneakered scholars in their billowing pantaloons, coiled and cocked, ready to accelerate, elevate, levitate, and detonate, ready to - let's use those Hoop Head code cliches we have come to learn and love - Pass the Rock, Go to the Rack, Get a Good Look, Shoot the Trey, Give a Foul, Take the Charge, Give and Go, Double Down, and, of course, always, always, Work the Clock.

All right. Time. Take a seat. Grab a blow. Suck on some oxygen. Towel off. Rinse, swallow, huddle up, join hands, on 3 . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . .T-E-A-M!

And so once again it is time to welcome back an old friend, The Fine Chaos, known throughout the kingdom as March Madness. The NCAA men's collegiate basketball tournament. The Final Four, where every game is sudden death, where there is no margin for error, no do-over, where your first loss is also your last, where there is the promise of another tomorrow for the winners but only the cruel abrupt finality of defeat for the losers.

This is conducted playground-blunt: Loser walks.

For the next three weeks, a word you never hear the rest of the year will be a part of every water-cooler sentence:

Brackets.

If you are exhaustively, pristinely researched in all things basketball, or if you are simply plumb-dumb-lucky, then your brackets will align in neat and proper rows and The Office Pool will be yours and you can strut around talking trash: "Na-na-na-nah, hey, hey, hey, good-bye."

But if the upsets you calculated do not come off, and if your mortal locks never get out of the first round, well then, welcome to the club, 3-Point Breath. And just to rub it in: The money goes to some schlub over in accounting who made his picks based on uniform colors. (Fire engine red trumps Carolina blue.)

Tonight, the Brackets will be unveiled on TV. Four regions, each with 16 teams, seeded: No. 16 plays No. 1, No. 15 plays No. 2, and so on. This is the only sporting event known to man that does not involve actually playing something, and yet the ratings are always boxcar numbers. The Final Four is pure viewing gold.

It was not always thus. There was a time, and not so long ago, that the NIT was the tournament to die for, and the NCAA championship game was shown on tape delay. This all began to change in 1979, when Michigan State played Indiana State for the title. More to the point: Magic Johnson opposite Larry Bird on the marquee. They would be yoked in the NBA for several glittering years, and would help the pros revive interest in their game just as they brought life to the Final Four.

(A confession: This has always been my favorite part of the year, first the elegant majesty of the Masters, where to stand at the entrance of Magnolia Lane is to stand at Heaven's Gate, and the boundless energy and crackling drama of the Final Four rejuvenates you, washes away the grime of winter.)

This is unfettered youth at its rollicking best, flawed and redeemed.

And so there will be impossible theater, the launchings of Buzzer Beaters that make that sweetest of sound, that snick as ball splashes through nylon netting.

And there will be agony, too, that awful, mocking sound of ball clanking iron and bounding away, taking shattered dreams with it.

The crucible is a black stripe located precisely 15 feet from the basket. The free throw line. More is won here, and more is lost here, than any other place on the court.

It should be simple. No one to guard you. Bounce-bounce, sight, release, follow-through. So simple.

But there are nerves to harness. Fatigue to ignore. Shaken confidence to steady and regain. Not so simple.

So who will be parading around the trophy round about midnight three weeks and a day from now? The usual suspects, the haves, the super powers, with a couple of hopefuls: UConn, Carolina, Pitt, Memphis, Oklahoma, Wake Forest, Duke, Louisville, Michigan State, Kansas, Washington.

Maybe someone else.

Maybe Villanova?

A long shot, but why not? Nova is undersized but experienced, stocked with scrappy defensive demons who buzz around and seem never to tire.

What we know for sure is that along the way favorites will topple and underdogs will rise up.

And your remote will beg for a time out.