I've been courtside inside the Tulsa Convention Center for going on 22 hours now, working on a piece for the next Magazine on the real March Madness, and I'm just now beginning to realize why the hospitality room here serves their Mountain Dew in one-liter increments.

If the NCAA is Mad in March then the NAIA is certifiably insane. Thirty-two teams, 31 games (all of them scrappy and spirited so far), six days, one court, each tilt right after the next with only a 10 minute break between games.

I'm on my 11th game now, and the action is beginning to unfold in front of me like some live hoops screen saver. My back hurts, I have eaten Nachos for breakfast the last two days, I am quite certain I didn't pack enough boxers and the chirping of sneakers is stuck in my head like some bad ELO song. And the best part is, I get to come back and do it all again tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next ...

What I've discovered is the skeptics are absolutely right: the NAIA lacks a lot of what the NCAA offers this time of year. There are no Bob Knights or Rick Pitinos or Billy Packers in Tulsa. There are no quickie marriages to keep people eligible. There are no blowouts. No showboating. No laughable oxymorons like "student-athlete".

Instead there's the No. 1 ranked Transylvania U. warming up in, I swear, uniforms the color of dried blood. There's the retired couple from California here on their honeymoon. There's the chiropractic school that gave me a free spinal adjustment this morning. There's the guard from Oklahoma Baptist, back on the court after nearly dying a year ago when his trachea was crushed by an errant elbow.

The NAIA also offers Life (University), Hope (International), Madonna (college), Faulkner, Hannibal, Notre Dame (Calif.) and Georgetown (Ky.) and even The Master's (Calif.).

What more could you need? Ya know, every once in a while you get an assignment like this that cleanses your sports spirit. I am trapped in some kind of weird, wonderful college hoops parallel universe and, I gotta tell ya, I'm not coming back.

Please, someone, send boxers.

David Fleming is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at flemfile@aol.com.