Bracketology

When it comes to college basketball, my knowledge is basic at best. I am not completely clueless to think that Blake Griffin might be a character on Family Guy but before the 2009 March Madness tournament began, I could name maybe five players off the top of my head: Griffin, Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson, Jordan Hill and Jeff Teague. I also had no clue where 14th ranked American University was (answer Washington, D.C.). Every year I come into the middle of March just as clueless as this year about college basketball and every year I get swept up in the excitement that is March Madness.

With nothing going on in March, as basketball and hockey usually are plodding to an end, the setup of the tournament with a few games going on at any given time in the middle of March makes it a sports fanatic's and gambler’s dream. I love watching the little guy being guarded by trees who launches and makes a ridiculous amount of treys in a game because he reminds me of how I used to play the game minus making the treys (5'11" Texan Longhorns' guard AJ Abrams hit eight three pointers helping to beat Minnesota in the first round). Every year I get more and more surprised at how upbeat the band members are and depressingly, how young the cheerleaders look. I get giddy waiting for the name that Dick Vitale will mess up with last year’s butchering of Luc Mbah a Moute being the name to be topped. And most importantly, I get caught up in the accompanying office pool.

The beauty of the March Madness pool is that anybody can win because 95% of us really do not know anything substantial about college basketball. We try and cram as much college basketball knowledge into our heads the day before the tournament begins but one upset can make it all for nothing. The tournament can make the most knowledgeable sports enthusiast look dumb and on the other hand, the person who picks teams based on uniform colors or if their friend went to that school look like a genius. Every year I go into a pool with a bunch of friends with the only thing on the line being pride. Nobody really even cares about winning, all that matters is beating the most dominant NCAA picking machine in our pool's history... the dreaded DEFAULT team. The DEFAULT team is a ghost manager who picks the highest seeds to win. Usually, DEFAULT does really well when compared to the rest of us. The reason why DEFAULT does so well is obvious as it always picks the favorite and favorites usually win, but before last year's tournament, I decided that there had to be a way to get an edge and consistently beat the vaunted ghost manager.

I like numbers and I love applying them to sports. You are looking at the guy who does spreadsheets with unconventional stats specifially adjusted to a certain fantasy pool. Maybe this adds to the list of what makes me an uber-dork but I really do believe that although filling out the perfect bracket is virtually impossible (try 1 in 9 quintillion) winning an office pool should not be difficult. The tournament has happened every year in basically the same format since 1985 which gives anybody with rudimentary math skills the ability to draw upon the repeated events in order to prognosticate the future. Of course if you are lazy like me then you can let somebody else do the work for you and just Google search to find historical trends.

The basic rules that I use when filling out my bracket are...
- Avoid picking upsets in the first round other than three scenarios: 1) Nine seeds are more likely to win than eight seeds. 2) Ten seeds beat seven seeds 42% of the time. 3) If you want to pick a "big" upset, twelve seeds can sometimes upset five seeds. Do not pick a first or second seed to lose as it basically never happens.
- Avoid overhyping bad teams due to a top prospect. Even though basketball is the sport that seemingly allows one player to dominate a game more frequently, it will probably not happen over an entire tournament. For this year that means you Arizona with lottery pick Jordan Hill.
- Your Final Four should have only teams seeded one or two and I typically go boring with three number ones and a number two. For this year that would be Duke.

By the way, the ending to the story is a happy one as your hero slayed the giant DEFAULT beast. I won our pool in 2008 and finished in the top 97% of Yahoo's overall leaders. Life can be a fairytale and fantasy sports dreams can become reality.