Anybody who knows me, knows that I'm a pretty laid back guy and it takes quite a bit to get me fired up about something. The one sure-fire event that does the trick every year is the NCAA Tournament. Unlike any other sporting event, the NCAA Tournament has it all. The thrills, the upsets, the emergence of star players, the electric atmosphere, the Davids, the Goliaths, the smiles, the tears and let's not forget, the amazing over-the-top, ear-shattering tones of Gus Johnson. Ahh, the Madness, let the games begin.

There are so many levels in which the Tournament works it's hard to even begin to succinctly break it down, but I'll do my best to do so with a Letterman-esque Top-10 list guarantees that will come out of this year's Big Dance.

10. I guarantee Betty from accounting will post a better score in her brackets than you did despite the fact she made her picks based on the prettiest state flowers of the teams they represent, while you stayed up for four straight days breaking down all 65 team's RPI, strength of schedule, senior leadership, quality point guard play, travel distance and tournament history.

9. I guarantee one of the No. 16 seeds will be getting 38 points from our friends in Vegas and it still won't be enough for you to win your bet.

8. I guarantee people from both coasts will watch several Big Ten schools play their methodical, sleep-inducing brand of basketball and come to the conclusion that the conference is lite years behind power conferences such as the Big East, Big 12, ACC, Ohio Valley, Big Sky, Pac 10, Patriot and Mountain West. All right, I'm exaggerating a bit but you'll see what I mean next Thursday when Illinois jumps out to a 15-12 halftime lead over Sienna only to lose 32-30 in triple overtime.

7. I guarantee one player from a mid-major will put together two big games, carry his team on his back to the Sweet 16 and Verne Lundquist will start talking about how he's "made the most of his 15 minutes of fame and that he can't wait to see how his game translates to the next level." Then, two years later, we'll read about the same player knocking over a couple liquor stores, getting in a high-speed police chase and trading in that 15 minutes of fame for 15 years in state prison.

6. I guarantee that despite a one-and-done performance, fans will go away from the Tournament knowing that Morehead St. University is actually a fine educational facility located in Eastern Kentucky instead of being the punch line of a poorly constructed joke.

5. I guarantee that some know-it-all in your office pool will rave about the fact that he was the only one who had Robert Morris pulling the first-round upset over a No. 2 seed, but will also fail to mention it was his only correct pick of his entire bracket.

4. I guarantee millions of basketball junkies will spend next Thursday and Friday pretending to work while following all of the early first-round matchups on their computers/Blackberrys, only to get fired when they start shouting expletives in the middle of the boss' quarterly budget meeting, effectively ending their charade and ultimately their careers.

3. I guarantee the terms "mid-major" and "selection committee" will be tossed around more in the next few weeks than "stimulus package" has been in the last year.

2. I guarantee that when the field of 65 teams is announced on Sunday that Dick Vitale will cry foul about how several teams were unjustly left out only to become speechless minutes later when asked which teams he would eliminate in order to get those teams in.

1. And the No. 1 guarantee heading into this year's NCAA Tournament is: I guarantee I will fill out several brackets for several different pools in an effort to win several hundred dollars only to be out of the running for every one of them by about 4:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon. But I also guarantee I'll be back doing it all over again next year at this time because there truly is nothing like March Madness.

Got some guarantees of your own, let's hear 'em, post them here.