By MARK KRAM -- kramm@phillynews.com

SELECTION SUNDAY is always a big day in America, full of apprehension and excitement. Coaches, players and fans sit poised before television sets from Maine to Hawaii in anticipation of hearing whom the NCAA has chosen to play in its 64-team scramble that ends with the championship game on April 4.

David LeCompte is also very interested in the outcome of this event, but not because he has a vested interest in any of the teams. He does not even care who gets in, only that his computer system is in working order and that no blizzards are looming on the horizon.

That indeed would be disconcerting to LeCompte because he runs a travel agency.

Check that: He runs THE agency chosen by the NCAA to book travel during "March Madness." For both the men AND women. And not just for Division I, but for Division II and III. And not just for coaches and players, but for athletic department staff, cheerleaders and the odd trombone player and his cohorts. Oh yes: And for the referees.

"Let me just say this: Our people go through a lot of Red Bull [energy drink] and Cheetos during a period like this," says LeCompte, the president of Waterloo, Iowa-based Short's Travel Management. "Some of them will be working 20 hours for 3, 4 and 5 days in a row. This is certainly a... well... a special period for us."

When you hear that just one travel agency is responsible for getting 129 Division I teams from A to B (and sometimes to C by way of F and G), it conjures up that scene in the old Woody Allen film, "Bananas." Woody (as the character Fielding Mellish) leads a band of South American rebels into a roadside diner and orders 1,000 grilled cheese, 300 tuna and BLT sandwiches; 700 coffees; 500 Cokes and 1,000 7Ups. Scribbling furiously, the counterman then looks up from his pad and asks, "Do you want coleslaw with that?" Nothing quite so comic happens out in Waterloo on Selection Sunday and the hectic days following it, but you can just picture a beleaguered agent answering the telephone and asking, "How many people did you say that was?"

Ten months of planning have gone into preparing for "March Madness," but there is little they can actually do until the teams are announced. Says LeCompte, "We knew where they were going - the destination - but not where the teams were coming from." Consequently, 25 agents were on hand Sunday just as the teams were announced to book travel to Indianapolis; Cleveland; Tucson, Ariz.; Charlotte, N.C.; Nashville, Tenn.; Boise, Idaho; Oklahoma City, Okla.; and Worcester, Mass. Because the NCAA prohibits teams from flying on trips that are less than 300 miles (in which case they have to pile onto buses), it remained unclear until well into Sunday who would be required to fly commercial or charter. Given that the NCAA limits each of the 129 traveling parties to 75 people, LeCompte has had to arrange passage for under 10,000 people in just a few hurried days. Says LeCompte, "It is a logistical nightmare."

Now in their second year of working with the NCAA, which selected them in May 2003 out of eight national bidders, the company approached its assignment this year with an elevated degree of confidence. Going into the tournament a year ago, all it had to work from was a practice run. According to Stephanie Schmidt, the agency's manager for championship travel, staff members spent 2 days simulating an actual tournament. They had "exasperated" athletes and coaches phoning in with questions and requests. "Emergency" situations also came up. "Planes were grounded for mechanical problems, so we had to get our people thinking: 'What do we do if this happens or that happens?' " LeCompte says. "But the bottom line is, you can never understand an experience like this until you go through it."

Complicating matters is the fact that "March Madness" occurs during a time when many schools are off on spring break. This places a premium on airline seating, especially to warm-weather destinations such as California, Arizona and Florida. To meet the demand, LeCompte says that in addition to whatever might be available commercially, his firm has an arrangement with "more than 10 charter companies" that have been pre-approved for use. LeCompte says that it is not uncommon for "a piece of equipment" to be used on up to five trips on a given day to shuttle parties to their destinations. "Our goal is to get everyone there in time, not just for the game but for their designated practice time," LeCompte says. "Last year we obviously did that, yet there was a learning curve that has enabled us to become more efficient."

Given the number of people who had to be moved and the small window with which Short's had to work, the foul-ups were surprisingly few. Schmidt says that "the only real glitch" last year occurred when a snowstorm immobilized part of the country, which closed airports and caused a shortage of pilots. LeCompte: "Since crews are only allowed to fly a certain amount of hours, we found ourselves in some cases with equipment and no pilots." Schmidt: "We had to go through a lot of airlines to get the problem resolved." She adds that while weather is not a contingency that can be planned for, she and her staff have prepared for others that are within their control.

"We have contingencies set up," she says. "If someone gets sick, we know what we are going to do. One of our girls is pregnant, so we even know what we are going to do if her baby comes early."

Schmidt says she and her staff have a better feel this year for the questions that will come up. "It can be anything from seat assignments to the fact that some teams would prefer not to travel with band members and such," she adds. "We try to accommodate them if we can do it under the guidelines we have from the NCCA."

Read: Can it be accomplished in a cost-effective way. LeCompte estimates that the NCAA spent $10 million on basketball tournament travel last year because of the high use of chartered airplanes. This year? LeCompte says, "I have no way of knowing yet."

And keep in mind: "March Madness" is just a piece of the overall assignment the travel agency has been given by the NCAA. There are 88 NCAA championship tournaments each year and Short's books the travel for each one. Schmidt laughs when asked if she and her staff breath a sigh of relief when the NCAA basketball champions are crowned.

"Oh no, that comes later," she says. "We STILL have the College World Series to do. Then we get to sigh with relief."