NCAA basketball's Championship Week sure is a fun event, because it allows the casual sports fan to watch teams from conferences nobody's ever heard of. The NEC? Didn't they used to make computers?

Wednesday my boys from the Mid-American Conference began their tournament with little fanfare, notably because the teams were all mediocre, but mainly because it was the day the power conferences began their tourneys. Wow! Forgive me if I stare blankly into the midnight sky at the mention of that.

Granted, I expect nobody outside the Great Lakes region to pick the MAC over the ACC, but practically all the insignificant games in the big boys' tournaments reach basic cable. All the Big East tournament games made ESPN. We have to wonder why, considering that watching a power conference tournament's first round is like hearing about Jessica Alba's acid reflux. It's not the reason we pay attention to them.

On Thursday night we were subjected to Pittsburgh and Marquette, two teams ranked in the teens, because The Office was a rerun. The phrase "tournament game" indicates some kind of elimination, yet we all know their school names will be Xeroxed a million times next year and circulated in office pools. So maybe "Big East" and "Tournament" is akin to "MTV" and "music videos."

And, hey look! Duke lost to NC State! Oh, they'll still make the NCAA tournament. Wake me when their season ends.

At least the Big Sky championship game means something. If the winner goes on to the Round Of 64-I-Mean-65 and the loser has to study for their sociology exam, then unofficially the BSC title game is part of the Round of 128. The Weber State-Northern Arizona game Wednesday night was certainly an exciting game. West Virginia-Providence? Yeah, not so much.

The bottom line is that most teams in the Big Ten and SEC are playing for bracket seeding. Folks in the MAC and Sun Belt are playing for a postseason at all. Take a wild guess as to which teams will try just a bit harder.