The NCAA Tournament is underway, and productivity will suffer as CBS is packed with wall-to-wall games.

If you filled out a bracket, you’re busy with a marker checking wins and losses as you read this.

But take solace: even if your bracket seems busted already, office pools are won in the later rounds. So if Richmond shocks Villanova in the second round, worry not.

Here’s some food for thought as college basketball nirvana erupts for the next few weeks.

If you picked a No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 in the first round, you must like the odds of a snowball in hades. In 24 years and 96 games, the No. 1 seed is 96-0. There have been close calls, but, close counts only in horseshoes, hand grenades and nuclear weapons. Moral victories? Ask Mississippi State about how that feels after losing to Kentucky in the SEC Tournament championship game Sunday. Even after winning two games in the SEC Tournament, it still wasn’t enough to overcome the Bulldogs’ RPI, which was lower than Tim Tebow’s Wonderlic score.

Steve Wilson is sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at 601-636-4545, ext. 142 or at swilson@vicksburgpost.com

Second seeds are nearly as safe, winning 95.8 percent of the time. 15-seed Coppin State’s shocking win in 1997 over South Carolina was what they like to call in statistics an outlier.

Three seeds have lost just 15 of 96 times, so the possibility is there. It’s just about as likely as getting a date with Jessica Simpson or winning a Nobel Peace Prize. But if President Barack Obama could win one for his good intentions or his nifty NCAA bracket from last year, well…

When it comes to dollars and sense, CBS and the NCAA are in the midst of an 11-year, $6 billion deal that likely would get even bigger if the tournament expands from 65 to 96 teams. That’d be one of the dumbest ideas to come down the pike in decades. That and fondue pots, bell bottoms, Nu Metal, the Pontiac Aztek, girls rocking the Pat Benatar look, the AMC Gremlin, four-cylinder Ford Mustangs, the Macarena, interleague play in Major League Baseball, trucker hats, Crocs and popped collars.

While Mississippi State and Ole Miss, to a far lesser extent, would not be bad additions to the field, the rest of a 96-team bracket would be filled with lots of mediocrity just happy for a trip somewhere other than the Gulag Archipelago known as the NIT. The NCAA would have to open the door to the likes of St. John’s (17-15), UConn (17-15) and worst of all, defending NCAA champ North Carolina. The defending champs finished a downright miserable 16-16, yet if the bracket was 96 teams, they would have made it as an at-large. Yikes.

Besides, would you want to pick a watered-down, 96-team bracket? All of that research for 65 teams is really pushing it, but 96?

Speaking of an expanded bracket, how about the growth of off-brand tournaments? The NIT is the oldest of them, founded in 1938, but there is now the College Basketball Invitational (2007) and the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament (2008). An expanded bracket would be the death knell for both of these and the NCAA-owned NCAA as well. It’s a real case of March Madness.

Guess $6 billion over 11 years just isn’t enough loot for the NCAA.