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What: ESPN.com’s NCAA tournament pool

Even if you don’t know Murray State from Arthur Murray, odds are you’ll be asked to join an NCAA tournament pool next week. Every office, every dormitory, every corner bar seems to have a pool.

The tab is usually $5, and you can win a jackpot of around $500.

Not that you’re going to be arrested or anything like that, but, technically, if you pony up $5 to get in a pool, you’re breaking the law. Actually, the laws against office pools were designed for commercial enterprises involved in bookmaking, so you really have nothing to fear.

But if digging into your wallet for $5 bothers you, there is an alternative. Find a pool on the Internet. If it’s legal, it will be free.

We found one on ESPN.com. It’s touted to be the largest interactive contest on the Web. On Sunday, we clicked on ESPN.com’s front page, then clicked on Fantasy Games and registered--for free.

So we’re in. Now all we have to do is make our picks before the tournament begins. Not that we expect to win. There were close to 300,000 contestants last year. But someone has to win. Last year it was Michael Horton of South Portland, Maine.

So if we can beat 300,000 or so other people--yeah, we know, even beating 50 or so is tough enough--think of all the bragging we can do. But there’s more. The winner also gets a trip to the 2000 Final Four, 64 Big New Yorker pizzas from Pizza Hut--you don’t have to eat all 64 at once--and a Compaq Presario Internet PC.