W elcome to the best three weeks in the world of sports.

Nothing else compares. You can have the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the World Cup (but only if you promise to keep the World Cup and never, ever make us watch it again).

Take all the college football bowl games, the NBA playoffs and the Stanley Cup, roll them into one, and you still don't have anything to compare with the NCAA basketball tournament.

It's three weeks of heaven. Three weeks of nonstop, wall-to-wall hoops. Burst bubbles, blown-up brackets and buzzer-beaters. Upsets and underdogs, top seeds and topsy-turvy games, mascots and mass chaos.

Give me the NCAA basketball tournament and everything is right with the world.

Technically, the tournament doesn't start until Thursday, when the first round begins (OK, Tuesday for the purists who insist upon counting the play-in game).

But in reality, it starts this afternoon, when the NCAA Selection Committee emerges to reveal ... The Bracket.

If you live in America, you know about The Bracket. You know it includes 65 teams. You know it includes No. 1 seeds, No. 16 seeds and everything in between.

You know those No. 16 seeds have absolutely, positively no chance of winning a game -- but therethey are, each harboring the hope that this is the year they will spring the upset that will stun the world.

Meanwhile, you know this is the year that your bracket will separate you from the masses. This is the year your upsets will come to fruition, the year your hoops intuition will reveal your true genius.

The perfect event?

It couldn't be better. Not so long that it becomes laborious (did someone say NBA playoffs?). Not saddled with two weeks of hype for one game that cannot live up to expectations (Super Bowl anyone?). Not seven games spread across two weeks (World Series), and not three weeks full of events people watch only once every four years (Olympics).

It's three weeks of excitement, with just enough time in between to gather your breath and look ahead to the next round.

The NCAA Tournament has something for everyone.

Hate the Dookies? Of course you do. They are the Yankees, the Cowboys and the Celtics. If you aren't one of the folks who worships the ground on which Coach K walks, you're one of the folks who loves to see the Blue Devils lose.

Love the underdog? Plenty to go around. The NCAA Tournament gives us Austin Peay and Cornell, Siena and Winthrop. Each ostensibly has the same chance to win as UCLA, North Carolina and Kansas. No other major sport gives the little guy such an equal chance.

The perfect event?

Name another that attracts the attention of not just the hard-core fan, but the fan who hardly cares about any other event. Put The Bracket in front of someone -- anyone -- and visions of grandeur immediately begin to sprout.

No other event captures America's attention with such vigor. According to an annual survey by Chicago-based placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., March Madness this year may cost employers as much as $1.7 billion in productivity.

Yep, that's "billion" with a B. If our government really wanted to produce a national economic stimulus package, it would somehow tie such a deal into The Bracket.

Then we'd have a bona fide boost that would last.

Of course, there are folks who would change the tournament. Coaches who get left out every year complain that the tournament needs more teams.

We say phooey on an expanded field. If they bumped The Bracket to 96 teams, No. 97 would whine.

Leave it as is. Don't change it. Not a bit.

It's the perfect event. It gives us Cinderellas and broken dreams, champs and chumps.

It's the perfect American event.

Sit back and enjoy.