Get Ready for NCAA March Madness

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - Right between the Super Bowl and opening day in Major League baseball comes … March Madness.

Office pools, brackets and seemingly endless broadcasts of college basketball will dominate TV and computer screens for the 20-day "Big Dance" starting Tuesday in this single-elimination NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship tournament.

The annual tournament, aka "March Madness," features 65 teams, including conference champions and at-large teams. The action gets started Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio, with Arkansas Pine-Bluff and Winthrop. The winner of that opening round game will face Duke, champions of the Atlantic Coast Conference, in the first round Friday. Other first-round games get under way Thursday and Friday.

No. 1 Kansas earned the top seed overall, while Kentucky, Duke and Syracuse also earned top seeds. West Virginia won the Big East tournament but was given a second seed.

"All five of those teams had terrific resumes," Dan Guerrero, chair of the NCAA selection committee, told USA Today . "We put a lot of value on the way Duke finished."

Kansas, which opens Thursday against No. 16 Lehigh in the Midwest regional, and Kentucky both won their conference tournaments, while Syracuse lost in the Big East quarterfinals. Other conference champions in the tournament are Kansas State and Ohio State, USA Today reports .

"We're proud to be a No. 1 seed," Kansas coach Jim Boeheim told USA Today .

"This team has worked extremely hard, been consistent all year. Obviously, the tournament is always going to be challenging. It'll be challenging right off the bat," Boeheim said.

The tournament was created in 1939 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches and organized by the NCAA. Since its beginning champions from each Division I conference receives an automatic bid while the remaining teams get "at-large" berths with teams chosen by an NCAA selection committee, according to CollegeHoops.Net .

Also if you are looking for NCAA Basketball Tournament 2010 Predictions , check out these Final Four picks, sleeper picks and teams to avoid.

If you're looking for help filling out your brackets, try this NCAA Tournament interactive forecasting tool . Just don't tell your friends you cheated.