With Selection Sunday a mere five days away, people across the country are frantically organizing office pools and preparing themselves for the most exciting month in sports: March Madness.

With that in mind, I decided to dedicate the first installment of Top 10 Tuesday to Championship Week, you know the week of conference tournaments that lead up to Selection Sunday.

So here is one man’s list of the Top 10 reasons to watch Championship Week.

10. Finally a reason to watch college basketball: Most people feel that college basketball is watered down and that the season is too long. Not until the first day of the tournament, the majority of the casual fans out there don’t even watch a single game. (Yet they still wonder why they have no clue when filling out their respective brackets.) Championship Week changes that.

Now the teams are playing for a reason. Some are playing for momentum (see No. 7) and some are playing in order to get in (See No. . For that alone, the games are more exciting and dramatic then your average Monday night Big East regular season game.

9. Those “teams you’ve never heard of”: Every year when filling out a bracket the majority of the teams in the field of 64 are unknowns. Yeah, you’ve probably heard of Duke, North Carolina and UCLA, but you more than likely no little to nothing about teams like Drake, Butler and my favorite team every year in the tournament, IUPUI (they are my favorite just for the name, since I still have no idea what it stands for).

In case you’ve been living in a cave the past few years, some of these “unknown” and “smaller” schools are actually pretty damn good at basketball. Did you know Butler is ranked in the top 10? Did you know Drake is a top 25 team? Did you know Davidson features the country’s leading scorer (Stephen Curry, Dell’s son) and the country’s leading assist man? I doubt it. Tune in to championship week and you’ll soon find out.

8. Momentum: Teams like North Carolina, Duke, Memphis, Tennessee, UCLA and the like already know they will be playing in the tournament, but they don’t know where or as what seed. North Carolina probably has the most to lose because as the best team in the country, if they stumble during the ACC Tournament it could cost them not only a No. 1 seed, but the No. 1 overall seed as well. Other teams like Duke, Texas and Kansas could play themselves into a No. 1 seed if they win their conference tournaments. See, even the good teams have something to play for now.

7. “Bubble teams”: With San Diego and Middle Tennessee State winning their conference championships on Monday, the coveted “at-large” bids have been reduced. SD beat a Gonzaga team that will almost certainly get in as an at-large, and St. Mary’s (also from the WCC) will get in too. MTSU shocked South Alabama in the Sun Belt Tournament, but with a 26-6 record South Alabama is a likely at-large bid regardless of the loss.

What does all that mean? It means that the “bubble” for teams like Maryland, Syracuse, Ohio State, VCU and Arizona State suddenly got smaller and those teams will need a strong run in their respective conference tournaments in order to secure a berth in the tournament. Which in turn means they will be playing their hardest this week and everyone that steps on the court with them should watch out.

6. Wading pools: Bored at your job and getting anxious about filling out the “big bracket” in less then a week? Print out some Big East, ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big 12 and Pac-10 tournament sheets and hand them out in the office. Your failure in those pools will only prepare you for the letdown you will have next week when one of your Final Four teams go down in the second round. Plus it will kill some time and give you another reason to watch, and that’s an added bonus.

5. Duke-Carolina III: I know a lot of people out there hate Duke and hate Carolina, but you have to admit that everytime these two schools play it’s a great game. Seeing that this will be one of the last games to take place prior to the actual selection show,(the ACC final is on Sunday too) the quality of basketball will only prepare you for what you’ll see in the tournament. Not to mention both of these teams are championship contenders, so you get a chance to see what they are made of. Which reminds me.

4. Bragging rights: No other college basketball rivalry is as big as Duke and Carolina, but that doesn’t mean fans of other schools won’t have something to brag about if their team wins their conference title. What if something crazy happens like Florida making it to the SEC final and beating Tennessee? You think those Gator fans won’t let all the Volunteer fans no it? Didn’t think so. What about UCLA and USC in the Pac-10? or Kansas and Kansas State in the Big 12? This list goes on and on. Regardless of how your team fared in the regular season, if they win the conference crown you truly will have bragging rights.

3. The agony of defeat: It’s hard to see a bunch of college kids crying after a tough loss, but in a way it makes me smile. Not because I love seeing people cry, but because seeing them hurt after a loss makes me realize that they care about losing. These kids don’t play for shoe contracts, millions of dollars or houses with bowling alleys in them, they play because of the love of the game and that’s a good thing to see every now and then. Which leads me to No. 3.

2. “Celebrate good times, c’mon”: Nothing beats seeing college kids dance around like fools after being crowned conference champions. With 22 conference tournaments being played this week I am setting the number of “Solja Boy” dance celebrations that we’ll see at 15. Anyone wanna take the under? I didn’t think so.

1. Daytime basketball: Out of work or have a TV at your job? Well instead of watching Martha in Accounting’s soap operas you can tune into one of the many games that are being played during the day. Starting with Villanova vs. Syracuse at noon Wednesday, college basketball games can be seen all day on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Five straight days of college basketball. You will love it, your wife will hate it. It’s a win-win.

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