Welcome to Charlotte, basketball fans! We sure are glad to see you. Feel free to buy a few things while you're here. Some souvenirs. A nice meal. Maybe two or three houses.

But we can talk about that later. For now, let's talk March Madness. Today you can go watch your teams practice at Time Warner Cable Arena, and on Friday we get NCAA tournament games: Duke vs. Hampton, Michigan vs. Tennessee, North Carolina vs. Long Island and Washington vs. Georgia.

You're in good hands. Charlotte has hosted tournament games off and on since 1958. We had the Final Four in 1994. (Arkansas beat Duke for the title while then-President Bill Clinton watched.) You could put together a strong all-star team from players who grew up in these parts - David Thompson, James Worthy, Bobby Jones, Antawn Jamison, Stephen Curry. There's also the former Tar Heel who owns the Bobcats. Guy named Jordan. You might have heard of him.

We know basketball here.

We've also improved in the guest services area. Back in '94, our uptown entertainment options were lacking, so the city converted empty storefronts into temporary bars and restaurants and called it the Street of Champions. This was like grabbing random customers from Waffle House and calling them the Young Studs of America. But now, within a few blocks of the arena, you can eat, drink, dance, museum-hop, catch some music, see a movie and bowl. If your team loses Friday, stick around.

You've caught us at an interesting time. For decades Charlotte has been a city on the rise, mainly because so much of the country's banking business flows through it - basically, we're America's ATM. But the financial crisis has put a hurt on us. We don't have quite so many bankers looking for ways to spend their bonus money, which might be one reason tournament tickets were still available as of Wednesday afternoon.

So that thing about buying a couple houses while you're here? We sort of meant it. Make us an offer.

But while you're pondering that, ponder the basketball. These games used to be called the NCAA regionals - all the teams would be in the East Regional, or the Midwest, or whatever. But now teams from different regionals play in the same city because ( skip to next paragraph for short version) the NCAA decided more fans would come if higher-seeded teams had short road trips, so it invented the "pod" system that puts those teams in sites close to home, even though it's confusing for casual fans, not to mention that it puts low-seeded teams at an even bigger disadvantage.

The short version: Everybody makes a lot more money when Duke and North Carolina play in Charlotte. So here they are.

You can split both Duke and North Carolina fans into two types. One type is OK with the other team winning as long as they're not playing each other; if Duke wins its first-rounder, for example, some UNC fans might give it a half-hearted golf clap. The other group of fans not only want their enemy to lose every game, they want the team bus to break down on the way back to the hotel.

So if Duke happens to struggle against Hampton early on, that noise you hear will be the broken-down-bus crowd smelling blood. And if Duke pulls away for the win, you'll hear a few golf claps from the folks in light blue.

But it's not just Duke and Carolina. We have a record four teams - Georgia, Michigan, Tennessee and Washington - from the I Thought Those Were Football Schools category. If you go to get a hot dog and hear people talking about the Rose Bowl, that's why.

And then we have the Hampton Pirates and Long Island Blackbirds, from the category called Happy To Be Here. They're at the bottom of the seed bucket (LIU is a 15 seed, Hampton a 16). A No.16 seed has never won a tournament game. A No.15 seed has won just four times in history. But... the last time it happened, in 2001, do you know who pulled the upset?

That would be Hampton.

That's what makes today and Friday the best two days in sports. Duke ought to clobber Hampton, and UNC ought to stomp Long Island, but there's that delicious chance that it might go the other way. Over these next two days there will be 32 tournament games, and you can guarantee that somewhere an underdog will rise up, and a kid you've never heard of will make the nation's highlight reel.

Today the games start elsewhere. But here there's an open practice, free to the public, and you should go. You can gawk at all the talent when Duke or UNC takes the floor. But every other team has talent, too. And if you watch one team run a crisp drill, or note that another has a hot shooter, that's all it takes to believe.

Even if you get beat sometimes, it's worth it to dream big. That's the story of our town and this tournament. It's a good time to be here.