Every march around this time, my productivity levels drop and blood pressure rises as I take in what is to me (and all other natives of tobacco road) the most important religious celebration of the year: The NCAA tournament.

Today saw the start of the action with the righteous force for good and justice (also known as the Duke Blue Devils) narrowly avoiding the most embarrassing loss in program history to Belmont (which is apparently a college, as well as a race track).

If you share the faith, or even if you worship to some false idol like the UNC Tar Heels or Indiana Hoosiers (I am looking at you Lee Mack), there are a host of ways to keep up with all of the relevant games.

CBS, Yahoo, and ESPN are all offering free video of all 64 tournament games. Most games will also be archived on those sites, so that you can tune in later. Since the "mysterious" slowing of internet connections this past week, you may need to switch to audio, but 600kbps should be enough to watch games without interruption.

http://cbs.sportsline.com/

http://espn.com/

http://yahoo.com/

.....

On a side note, if you, like Josh Levin at Slate.com

http://www.slate.com/id/2186858/

are threatened by sustained excellence, do your best to avoid being exposed to it. Don't write in telling everyone how the mighty Duke Blue Devils make you feel sad and inadequate. It makes you sound like an obese adolescent complaining how America's Next Top Model has ruined their body image.

And now, a note from your friendly neighborhood sports editor

Despite Johnny's having so deftly beaten me to the punch on this one, I still feel compelled to chime in with the remnants of the blog post I would have written had he not stolen my thunder. Should you not have the kind of wide pipe leading from the Intertubes to your computer that Johnny has, there's a number of places around Beijing that you can check out to watch the tourney on a real live TV screen. It's pretty much exactly the places you'd expect, but should you not have heard of any of them, just click on the corresponding links for their phone numbers and information on how to get to each of them.

• Kro's Nest says that they'll be showing the games "whenever they're on and [we're] open"

• The tournament will be on at both Tim's Texas BBQ/Roadhouse. As of this writing, Tim hasn't decided which game's he'll be showing or whether he'll be recording, but he said that a lot depends on whether he gets a solid following from one of the schools whose teams go deep into the tournament.

• The Rickshaw's going to be showing games.

• During a call to Goose and Duck, it didn't sound like they had any special plans for March Madness a la their massive Super Bowl party, but they said they'd be willing to change the channel to the game of your choice if it's being broadcast on one of the channels they carry.

• For our Shunyi readers, The Pomegranate is going to be showing games on their massive sports setup.

• Finally, Sunset Bar & Grill has promised to broadcast "All the games as they're broadcast Stateside on CBS".

As always, it's advised that you call these places in advance to make sure that your preferred game will be up on the big screen.

One last tip, courtesy of Glenn Phelan of Paddy O'Shea's (which will likely not be showing the games, due to its clientèle's communist, freedom-hating leanings): almost all the places in Beijing run their sports feeds off of the satellites that provide ESPNStar to the Philippines. To find out which games are going to be broadcast when, just go to www.espnstar.com, click on "TV Times" in the upper right-hand corner, on the following page select "Philippines" as your country, "Basketball" as your sport, the current date through April 7th as your dates, and voila!: you now have a printable, downloadable schedule of exactly when each of the games will be on in Beijing (the Philippines and the 'Jing lie in the same time zone, so there's no need to give yourself a headache by figuring out times, either).

End Sports Editor interruption. Apologies to Johnny for crapping in his brilliantly-written post.