The nice weather is making it hard to stay indoors, but starting today, sports fans actually have a legitimate excuse to forgo fresh air and hunker down on the couch—March Madness.

March Madness refers to the NCAA college basketball single-elimination tournament that garners a ton of attention in late March. “Madness” is a great adjective for the frenzy that surrounds the men’s and women’s games—and if you’ve taken a look at the tournament brackets, you might get a little giddy yourself.

We’ll leave the actual March Madness coverage to the big kids at ESPN and CBS Sports, but for those of you who don’t know your Sweet Sixteen from your Final Four, here’s a little background:

March Madness kicks off its first round of play today, with 64 college basketball teams pairing up for 32 games played over the next two days. Remember, it’s single elimination, so by the time the second round starts on March 20, the playing field will already be sliced in half. The remaining 32 teams will play, and the winners of those games will advance to the Sweet 16 round of play on March 25 and 26. Another cut brings us to the Elite 8 on March 27 and 28. Those teams that survive the first four rounds of play advance to the Final Four on April 3, and finally, the tournament wraps up with championship play on April 5.

Still with us? That was just for the men’s teams. Women b-ball players are also very much a part of the NCAA tournament and have their own share of mind-boggling brackets, though they have a different game schedule than their male counterparts. All told, by the time April 6 rolls around—the day of the women’s championship—basketball fans will have their appetites whetted by 126 games in the span of three weeks.

Die-hard college basketball fans take March Madness very seriously—and they’re just watching it. Imagine how the teams themselves must feel, especially those two that go head to head in the championship game, after surviving all those elimination games. It’s no wonder why March Madness is one of the most betted-upon sporting events next to the Super Bowl, although here’s some sobering news we heard on the radio recently: there’s a better chance of winning the lottery twice in a row than getting all of the brackets correct in March Madness.

We’ll be watching–will you? What are your predictions? Leave a comment below.

–The CollegeBound Network