...well, one of the men and women, at least.

One of the most amazing elements of this selection process has been the computer program the committee is using to keep track of the voting, selection, seeding and bracketing of the teams. It is a proprietary program designed by a programmer on the IT staff at the NCAA named Colin Chappell. He made an appearance early on Thursday, but I don't think we realized his true genius until we had thoroughly explored the program over the course of the day.

Chappell built the program several years ago but has been tweaking it into its current state, where the program can manage all elements of the selection process, from field-building to bracket-printing. The program even knows the many principles and procedures of the bracketing ("Conference teams shall not meet prior to the regional final," for example) and will offer an automatic alert to the committee that their placement has created a potential conflict.

Chappell has also offered his talents to the Regional Advisory Ranking system, and he worked with the conference monitoring system that provides the Nitty Gritty data to the selection committee. Without these programs, this involved process would be downright arduous. A salute to you, Mr. Chappell.