Hey, you.

Yes, I’m whispering. That’s because today is the last full day to make your ill-conceived, illogical selections in your highly illegal March Madness office pool, the No. 2 drug of choice among the 21-to-40, male, own-stock-in-Anheuser-Busch demographic.

And there’s the problem. Our roster of victims knows no gender, ethnic or economic boundaries. Tomorrow, America begins a 19-day affair with college basketball that will cause roughly $152.6 billion to change hands and cost corporations 14 trillion hours in lost productivity.

Those are only rough estimates, of course, sure to be released by the same fun-deprived folks who decided that repeating “Seinfeld” jokes in a staff meeting constituted sexual harassment. But it’s true, to an extent. Not since the release of Bill Clinton’s “My Life” have so many good people tripped over one another in their haste to flush perfectly good currency down the toilet.

Of course, your odds are better than Powerball, and we’re all on equal footing. Because let’s face it, those of us with jobs, spouses, children, taxes and frozen pipes don’t invest an hour of our time or one ounce of emotional capital in college hoops before Feb. 28.

Best of all, there are surefire, time-tested ways to outsmart the life-challenged cyber geek who shacks up in his cubicle all winter long memorizing the names of Gonzaga’s graduate assistant coach and West Virginia’s water boy.

Try these out if you’re stumped:

Hack the hyphens. You can’t fit their name on that three-centimeter line, anyway. And think of it this way: Any school that needs a dash in its last name is trying to escape the shadow of a superior program in its home state. It’s best to shy away from Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Louisiana-Lafayette. Also, don’t be fooled by schools that try to slip the hyphen past you with a clever acronym like UAB or UTEP.

Chuck the compass. In a related rule, avoid any school that needs a directional term other than “North” or “South” to distinguish itself. This includes Northern Iowa and Southern Illinois, whose names give away the fact that their campuses and basketball programs are stranded in the middle of nowhere. Don’t get attached to Southeastern Louisiana, Eastern Kentucky and Central Florida, either. Seriously, would Duke be Duke if it were North Central Carolina? Heck, no. It’d be playing in the NAIA tournament.

Color by numbers. Only one school, Michigan State, won the national championship in the last 40 years without having a shade of red, blue or orange as the dominant color in its road jersey. Yeah, it could be mere coincidence, but it also should stop you from writing Oklahoma State (the red’s only trim), Wake Forest or Georgia Tech’s name in that final block.

Rest in peace. Don’t waste any time Google-ing a team that’s named after a specific person, no matter how famous he or she is. No need to check out George Washington’s RPI or St. Mary’s strength of schedule before writing them off. Then there’s Fairleigh Dickinson, which could be named after three or four different historical figures, for all I know. But hey, if you’re carrying a banner for a school from Teaneck, N.J., you have bigger problems than I can solve in one advice column.

Know your geography. If you can’t at least come up with the state in which a school plays its home games, you have no business projecting it into the second round. I suppose this disqualifies most of us from anointing Creighton, Winthrop, Old Dominion or Pacific as our Cinderella.

Dance with the Dirty Dozen. With only one exception, a No. 12 seed has pulled off a first-round stunner every year since the mid-1980s. Based on our previous criteria, the only remaining candidate is New Mexico. Thank goodness for that state’s independent spirit. Otherwise, they’d be Eastern Arizona or West Texas, and we’d be in a world of trouble.

Don’t sweat the upsets. First-round surprises happen. Yes, this flies in the face of the logic espoused by every over-exposed ESPN “bracketologist” whose picks show the intellectual courage of forecasting that Wal-Mart might make a profit this year. But tradition reigns once we get to Round Two. Most pools increase the value of each round, so don’t get too cute and project Nevada, Utah State, Ohio or Pennsylvania into your Elite Eight. Latch onto a No. 10 here or a No. 13 there in Thursday and Friday’s games, but be fickle.

Ignore the columnist’s Final Four. I hereby jinx Louisville, Illinois, North Carolina and Kentucky, with the Fighting Illini trumping the Tar Heels in the final.

Enjoy the experience. And hey, a wrinkled portrait of Abe Lincoln (no teams in the field are named after him) will get you in my pool until 11:59 a.m. Thursday.

Keep it to yourself, though, OK?

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is .