INDIANAPOLIS (MCT) - After 11 hours and 45 minutes, a bouncing baby basketball bracket was born early Thursday morning. My two real kids took a combined seven hours to come into this world.

Hoping to shed light on a voting process shrouded only slightly less in mystery than the papal election, the NCAA invited a handful of U.S. Basketball Writers Association members to its Indianapolis headquarters on Wednesday to show us how the eligible Division I basketball teams become your handy dandy office pool. The Philadelphia Daily News received one of those invitations.

Step by tedious step, NCAA officials walked us through the process until we emerged, bleary-eyed and dazed with an NCAA Tournament bracket in hand. Ours was a condensed, one-day simulation of what takes the committee five days in March to do.

We used the same computer programs, followed the same procedures, even ate the same food. The hope was that when Gary Walters, this year's selection committee chair, emerges from the bunker to explain how his group got to this year's specific bracket we could at least understand it a little better.

Pretending that the season ended Tuesday and with NCAA staffers every so often maniacally announcing new automatic qualifiers to upset our carefully constructed plan (for some reason, David Worlock, the associate director of the Division I men's basketball championship, sounded an awful lot like one of those cartoon villains when he announced Houston upset Memphis in the Conference USA final), we emerged at 1:35 a.m., bleary eyed, dazed and ready for a throwdown with Billy Packer.

The exercise was at once educational, enlightening, exasperating and exhausting. By the time I headed back to my hotel room at 2 a.m., I could have doubled for Punxsutawney Phil, so shocked was I by the concept of oxygen in my brain and streetlights in my eyes.

In a feeble attempt to make you understand - and the fact is, until you are locked in a room with 24 sports writers, eight NCAA officials, a hard chair, a computer and no clue for 12 hours, you can't possibly understand - what follows is an abbreviated hour-by-hour account of how we emerged with the bracket.

If you don't like what you see, e-mail me, not the NCAA. This is the 65-team bracket as done by a bunch of basketball writers. The selection committee wasn't in attendance and the NCAA staff merely held our hands. They had no input on our actual bracket.

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1:30 P.M.: ARRIVAL

Bright-eyed, eager and excited we arrive at NCAA headquarters, convinced as basketball experts we can nail this thing with ease. Before we arrived, each of was partnered with another sports writer and together we represent one committee member. I was paired with Bryan Burwell, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Last week we received our homework, including the conferences we would represent and needed to be fluent in discussing - ours were the Missouri Valley and the Pac-10 - as well as a ballot including every Division I team from Air Force to Youngstown State.

As a pair we had to determine our 34 best teams, the teams we believed that deserved at-large bids regardless of the outcome of conference tournaments. We also were able to designate as many other teams as we liked as teams to consider for the top 34.

Inside the conference room, the tables are arranged in a gigantic rectangle, with the NCAA staffers anchoring one end and our mock chairmen, Tom Shatel, of the Omaha World-Herald, and Andy Katz, of ESPN, on the other. Each tandem has its own laptop computer as well as three larger computer screens in front of them to view team information the NCAA staff will put up at our request.

In the front corner there is a beverage station, which, I will gladly learn shortly includes lots of caffeinated soda.

2:43 P.M.: FIRST BALLOT

The information available is a college basketball nut's fantasy. Short of team meals, you can pretty much get anything you need. Tell L.J. Wright, the director of the Division I men's basketball championship and computer guru, you want to see Tennessee as compared with Winthrop and he'll pull up two detailed team pages that include color coding for home, away and neutral games, color coding for common opponents, records against opponents as rated by RPI. Not enough? "L.J., I need UNLV and East Tennessee State,'' and there they are, too.

3:17 P.M.: SOME AT-LARGE BIDS DECIDED

From the first ballot, 22 teams meet the criteria - receiving votes from all but two members - to earn an at-large bid. For now. Nothing is final until it's final and this thing will change. But on the first ballot, the obvious candidates emerge - the likes of UCLA, North Carolina and Wisconsin, teams we know are in the tournament.

3:28 P.M.: EXPRESS ROUTE

Next, each of us has to list eight new teams that we think are worth considering for at-large bids. From that eight, two receive consensus - Arizona and Boston College - and are added to the at-large pool. This is the last express route to the at-large bid.

4:13 P.M.: GROUNDHOG DAY

Here's how it goes: You vote on eight more teams. From that vote, the top four vote-getters are added to a ballot that already includes four teams that didn't make it on the previous ballot. Got that? Me neither, and I voted.

In other words, Florida State, Georgetown, Stanford and Virginia Tech didn't make it on the express ballot. We now vote to add four more teams - Creighton, Texas, UNLV, and after a tiebreak against Kansas State, Villanova - to a ballot with that group.

Then you vote again, ranking them from top to bottom. The four who receive the necessary number of votes - this time, Creighton, Florida State, Stanford and UNLV, move into the at-large pool, meaning they're in the tournament for now. The other four wait for another ballot but like bad cheese, there is an expiration date. If you aren't voted in after two tries, you move back into the pool of at-large nominees.

4:43 P.M.: REPEAT

Like shampooing directions, it's time to rinse and repeat. And rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat. There is discussion in between on who's stronger and why but voting is subjective. This isn't politicking where you try to sway votes your way.

In all we voted 28 times to put together an at-large pool of 37 teams (34 will make the field). We thought 28 was an impressive total. Until Greg Shaheen, the NCAA senior vice president of basketball and business strategies who could do this stuff in his sleep but nonetheless walked us through like kindergartners, told us that over the course of its five-day March summit, the real committee will vote more than 100 times.

To give you an idea of how long this takes for us, Villanova was not officially added to the at-large pool until 5:56 p.m., 90 minutes after the tiebreak vote, and Texas, also in that first ballot, didn't make it into the at-large pool until 7:26.

4:58 P.M.: THE MVC

Then came the Billy Packer Argument, as it forever will be known after the CBS analyst chided the value of the Missouri Valley Conference despite admitting he never really saw any Valley games. The crux of our argument is why MVC teams are criticized for parity in their league when, in the ACC, parity just means it's a really strong conference.

Determining how to weigh the performance of the MVC teams for us is especially convoluted since, in the evil fantasy world of the NCAA, Evansville, a team that in the real world is 5-9 in its league, won the conference tournament.

6:10 P.M.: DINNER

I call my kids and vow to never whine about playing "school'' over and over and over again.

6:45 P.M.: ANOTHER VOTE

With 32 in our at-large pool, we take one more vote and after some dickering over the merits of Texas, Kansas State, Winthrop and Georgetown among others, 45 minutes later K-State, BYU, Southwest Missouri State and Texas get in.

7:30 P.M.: SEEDING BEGINS

We take a break from balloting to turn our attention to seeding. The idea is to rank the teams from 1 to 65. Before we begin, Shaheen warns us that if we thought balloting was tedious, this is actually "tedious, redundant and confusing.''

Oh joy.

To start, we rank the teams from the at-large and automatic qualifier pool that we believe to be the top eight teams available. The top four become the No. 1 seeds and the other four are held over for another ballot. In this case, UCLA, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin become our top four, with Ohio State, Kansas, Texas A&M and Pittsburgh set aside.

Next it's back to the original pool to select eight more teams, of which the top four join Ohio State, Kansas, Texas A&M and Pittsburgh for another one through eight ranking. The top four are now the No. 2 seeds - Ohio State, Texas A&M, Kansas and Pittsburgh.

That goes on for a really, really, really long time.

About this time you're wondering why our bracket shows Marquette as a No. 2 seed over Pittsburgh. That's because the maniacal Mr. Worlock, who at this point I believe might actually be a warlock, announced at 10:21 p.m. that Marquette had beaten Pittsburgh in the Big East Tournament final and since the Golden Eagles also beat the Panthers in the regular season, we opt to swap them on the seed line.

8:49 P.M.: BREAK FOR ICE CREAM

In case coffee and Diet Coke weren't enough, the NCAA wisely has brought out sugar to wake us up.

9:40 P.M.: BALLOTING CONTINUES

We actually get as far as the No. 5 seeds when Shaheen kindly suspends the process so we can go back to balloting.

In the last few hours, the conference tournament results have been pouring in. In some cases, teams already in our at-large pool prevail, moving them to automatic qualifiers and making room for another at-large team.

10:06 P.M.: LAST AT-LARGE

We do our last at-large balloting, moving four new teams into the pool of teams that could make the bracket. Ordinarily the selection committee would never reveal the last four in or out but since this isn't real, we can.

The last four added to the at-large pool (not the bracket yet), in order, were Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Michigan State - remember, this didn't include the 62-38 egg the Spartans laid at Purdue on Wednesday night, so no e-mails, please - and Alabama.

10:16 P.M.: SEED SWAPPING

Because we all have real jobs and because no one really wants to see dawn rising over the NCAA offices, Shaheen and his staff have seeded the rest of the tournament while we were dickering over the last ballot.

It is now our job to look at what was done and move things around how we see fit.

Since Memphis lost to Houston at about the same time hell froze over, we decide that Memphis doesn't deserve to be ahead of Washington State (which lost in a close one to UCLA in the Pac-10 final) and swap the two.

10:21 P.M.: LAST FOUR IN

The last conference tournament finals are set and because it's North Carolina vs. Virginia in the ACC, Kentucky vs. Florida in the SEC and Kansas vs. Texas in the Big 12, we are assured of adding three teams from the at-large pool into the bracket.

So welcome to the NCAA Tournament, Georgetown, Vanderbilt and Michigan State.

As for you, Alabama, sit tight. Indiana will play Iowa for the Big Ten championship. If Indiana wins and moves out of the at-large pool and into the automatic qualifier pool, roll Tide. If not, you're out to sea.

10:50 P.M.: MORE SEED SWAPPING

Shaheen tells us that seed swapping is something the committee likely will spend the most time on. Usually they'll start moving seeds around as early as Friday and not stop until Sunday afternoon.

11:18 P.M.: TIDE IS IN

Indiana wins the Big Ten tourney, which means Alabama makes the field of 65.

11:26 P.M.: BRACKETING BEGINS

Ideally, the committee wants to place teams as close to campus as possible. Conveniently, the NCAA software is so advanced that when Jeanne Boyd, the other computer guru in the room, clicks on a school the screen shows how many miles it is from all four regional sites and all eight subregional sites.

Ahhh, were that the only rule.

Also to consider, each of the first three teams from one conference has to play in different regions and conference teams can't meet until a regional final. With six from the Pac-10, that gets a little dicey.

Add to the mix, the committee wants to avoid regular-season rematches, particularly in the opening rounds, that balance is valued more than geography (the top No. 1 seed, for example, shouldn't have the top No. 2 and No. 3 seed in its region) and that BYU can't play in a Friday-Sunday region and you have a mess on your hands.

Fortunately the NCAA doesn't expect anyone to remember all of this. As we are putting teams on the bracket, Anthony Dean, another director, is working a computer program that double-checks all the criteria to make sure nothing is wrong. Dean also is saving the bracket as a backup, something that came into play last year when at 5:30 p.m. on Selection Sunday, the main computer crashed, gobbling the bracket with it. Dean's backup saved a huge mess.

The selection committee usually begins this process, Shaheen said, at about 4:30 or 4:45, giving them only about an hour to set the whole thing before CBS goes live.

Because we are not as good at this as the selection committee, CBS is currently showing "MacGyver'' reruns. We blow by our 12:15 a.m. deadline by a good hour.

1:15 A.M.: WE'RE DONE

I notice that no one cheers or even high-fives. We're too dog-tired.

2 A.M.: POSTSCRIPT

Heading back to the hotel I am contemplating a flight to Rome instead of back to Philly so I can catch up with the Vatican to see exactly how they make those smoke rings.

(c) 2007, Philadelphia Daily News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.