Each March, we bring together two of America’s favorite pastimes into one glorious event. March Madness combines basketball and gambling, because what could make 67 basketball games more exciting than having something riding on the stakes?

Well, we here at Onward State are no strangers to filling out brackets, and now we’re inviting you readers to try your own hands at it. It’s free to enter, and you can attempt to take down your fellow OS readers, and even some of your favorite writers. Oh, and you can even win a terrific prize!

Ah, yes, the reward. The top eight finishers will, in fact, get a prize. If your bracket is in the top two entries, you’ll win student season tickets for the 2011-2012 season, courtesy of Penn State basketball. But the fun doesn’t stop there: the next 6 finishers will receive a Penn State basketball T-shirt. And really, you’re all winners just for signing up because this will be a ton of fun, win or lose.

So it doesn’t matter whether your strategy is to pick the team with the cooler mascot, or if you’ll just pick Penn State to win it all, or even if you’re one of those college basketball diehards who watches every game and consults the advanced statistics while you fill out your brackets (in which case you have absolutely zero chance of winning).  You’re all welcome to join the Onward State Bracket Challenge.

What are you waiting for? Join the Yahoo! Group (password is pennstate) and enter your picks. Good luck!