Looking for advice on how to fill out your NCAA Tournament bracket?

Well, you’ve come to the wrong place.

Yes, I know with my title comes an understanding that I would be expected to know a lot on the matter, and believe me I do, but my success in accurately filling out a bracket is generally abysmal.

Which is surprising, since I took up the love of college basketball at a very young age.

One dreary winter day in 1993, my wise uncle, Joe Close, was looking for a radio station that would pick up the Villanova game — his alma mater, at our family camp in Potter County.

He found one, and I, a curious seven year-old, wandered over and asked what he was listening to.

Little did I know, he was introducing me to a life-long passion.

Ever since that day, I’ve been a huge Villanova and college basketball fan in general.

I remember leaving school for the day on the Thursday the tournament started in March as a fourth grader, eagerly explaining to one of my friends that I couldn’t wait to get home and watch the tournament (I wasn’t allowed to skip school).

I told him it was my favorite day of the year, and he just looked at me with a blank expression on his face.

I told him he just didn’t get it.

Which, looking back on it, probably was a bit rude, but I just couldn’t understand how other kids at Pleasant Elementary School in Warren didn’t have the same passion for this greatest of events.

Several years later, I was conveniently ‘sick,’ when the tournament started and therefore couldn’t go to school. My dad, as he left for work that morning, told me to enjoy the tournament, and he had a look in his eye that told me he knew I wasn’t really sick.

I’d like to think of it as a reward for being such a good kid (don’t laugh too hard).

Hopefully, the statue of limitations is over and I can no longer get in trouble for my truancy.

For the better part of 20 years, I’ve been filling out brackets with vigor, and haven’t achieved much in the way of success.

I’ve been beaten by the likes of my sister in these competitions before, which is every guy’s worst nightmare.

I’ve been beaten by kids half my age, my 15-year old brother, people who don’t even follow the sport — you name it.

That doesn’t mean my love for the tournament had decreased. If anything, it has grown even more.

From the opening round games to ‘One Shining Moment,’ there is nothing quite like the spectacle of ‘March Madness.’

Whether it’s the upsets, the Cinderellas, players coming out of nowhere and making a name for themselves, the tears, the joy or anything else associated with it, it simply brings out the best that sports has to offer.

I know many of you will be taking in the games like I will, on the edge of your seat, eagerly anticipating that next great moment that will be etched in history.

And when it’s all said and done, I hope some of you pick the team that will be cutting down the nets in Atlanta. Just don’t ask me who it will be, because more than likely my answer will be a team that’s gone on the first weekend.

Ask you mom, sister, brother, cousin, niece, nephew, aunt, uncle, or the woman that you work with who knows nothing about the tournament and picks the teams based soley on their name or mascot.

Trust me, you are better off doing this then coming to me.

Happy March Madness everyone! Enjoy the games!