by COLIN McENROE , Hartford Courant

In fact, I'm pretty much a lock to take the pot, even though I have picked Cornell - Go Big Red! - to win the whole schamoozle.

I've got the Big Red wiping the floor with North Dakota State in the semi-finals and then moving on to crush the Orange when the Ithaca team plays Syracuse in an All-Upstate New York Towns With Greek Mythology Names Final. It's the I-81 Smackdown, baby. It's the birthplace of Archimedes vs. the hometown of Ulysses, playing for the Big Eureka, baby.

The reason I am winning the office pool is that, for the first time in my adult life, I do not work in an office. I conduct my career activities strictly from my home. So I am the only person in my NCAA office pool. That's my $1,000 sitting out there in the kitty. I figure I'm going to win it back, plus a few weeks of interest. Maybe go out and celebrate in one of those places that has a "dollar menu."

I was getting pretty psyched about the office basketball pool on my morning commute today, which basically involves walking downstairs. I got caught in some stop-and-go traffic because there were two dogs ahead of me.

"There's a jackknifed pug on step five," I said, in my traffic report to myself, "so it's taillights pretty much all the way back to the second-floor landing. Once you get past that to the fourth step, it's a smooth ride all the way to the foyer."

Technically speaking, I could include my son Mortimer in the office pool, but there would be two risks associated with that. First, I would have to lend him the $1,000 to get in. Second, he actually won the WTIC-AM and FM office NCAA pool when he was 9 years old and I let him pick the games and put his entry in for him. He picked all four of the Final Four teams correctly and then correctly predicted UConn's win over Duke. Sports expert Scott Gray came in second.

It's what we all want for our children - early and misleading gambling success. By the time he was 10, some guys from Saratoga drove down and took his bicycle and his Pokemon collection after Shuffling Bid got pinned on the rail in the fifth furlong.

Still, one of the UConn athletic department guys was so impressed by Mortimer's prowess that he wanted to give us - I'm not kidding - a pair of Jake Voskuhl's used and discarded basketball sneakers to commemorate the triumph. I was kind of relieved when this failed to happen because I knew that we would be expected to display them somehow, possibly on a little shrine with - ideally, powerfully scented - candles. Actually, Voskuhl's feet are so big we could have probably converted the sneakers into planters for chrysanthemums as part of our office grounds landscaping.

I was remembering all that today at lunch in the company cafeteria here where I work. We have a terrific cafeteria, with a big refrigerator and a stove. Today they had "Make Your Own Sandwich Day."

Come to think of it, they pretty much always have "Make Your Own Sandwich Day" in the company cafeteria.

There are a lot of other perks, working here. You know how long you have to wait at a big office before you get a parking space near the building? I got one the first day I showed up here.

A little while ago, I had to head over to the Conference Room to take a quick meeting. Present at the meeting were me, Mortimer and two dogs; and it was decided that Mortimer would go take a shower and the dogs would continue lying on the floor (in the case of the larger dog) and on the couch (in the case of the smaller dog) and I would get back to writing. After the meeting, I walked past the Employee Lounge, where there are comfortable couches and where you can watch "Battlestar Galactica" reruns, although that is not recommended. I also walked past the cafeteria, where it is also "Make Your Own Snack Day," although that also is not recommended. It would probably be better to have vending machines, maybe some kind of locking device where I have to put in 75 cents in order to open one on my cabinets.

In just a few minutes, I might check again to see how I am doing in the pool. One of the nice things about being the only participant is that I am free to pick some jaw-dropping upsets, go with my heart and my guts instead of adhering slavishly to conservative choices. I notice that basketball expert Dick Vitale picked the top four seeds as his Final Four. Yawn. My four includes the North Dakota State Bison, who have already lost, and I am still going to win the pool. Go (home) Bison! An advantage of having no office mates is not having to correct them all the time when they say "Bisons," which is something people have a tendency to do when they're talking about ND State. At least they probably do. You know, in offices where people talk to one another.

Cornell, on the other hand, has no official mascot, although it has an unofficial bear. For many years, a live bear actually served as a mascot at games. The university went through a series of four bears. Eventually, animal protection groups intervened, saying it was cruel to make a bear watch its team lose so often. In 1898, a soup executive named Herberton Williams attended a football game and was so taken with the cherry-and-white Cornell color scheme that he made Campbell's change its label. So Cornell actually saved Andy Warhol from producing an enormous amount of orange and black art.

I mentioned this fascinating stuff to my co-workers, but it only elicited loud canine snoring.

My day at the office is almost over. Time to start packing up for the evening commute. I hope nobody left a towel on the stairs. That could cause heavy delays.

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