Wednesday · March 26 2008
My NCAA bracket sucks. Yours probably does too. Have you ever won one of these? I'm not sure why I still bother since I don't watch college basketball outside of March.
I won once. My freshman year in college. I picked Cincinnati to go all the way just because my parents went there. They surprisingly made it to the final four so I won. I guess that's my one win for life.
I've tried a few time since and failed. Now, I don't even bother. The guys at work are shocked that I would not want to enter the pool, but I find basketball to be tedious and dull and I don't like losing money.
I'm in several pools, and I usually do pretty well. The first time I was invited to play, I read a bunch of journal articles about statistics and brackets - nothing about basketball, just the math. Lots of weird things like how the 11 seed is most often the upset and how the 1 seeds never make the final four all at once. I know nothing about the teams, but I usually win money. I'm such a nerd.
That's really smart, especially if you're in several pools and they aren't winner-take-all. Insofar as the process for selecting and seeding teams stays the same from year to year - and I think it does - the math approach will be more effective than trying to figure out which teams will play above their season average and which teams will dissapoint.
A guy at ESPN.com (I think) has tried some approaches like that with the NFL. He picks every game to finish 24-17.
More help from a non-mathy approach.
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/oped/march_sadness.php
Yes.
I currently live near a bunch of Connecticut natives, so the whole San Diego thing broke their brackets. Good for me :)
I got 3rd! Even if you don't get much else right, but you get the final game and the winner, there's hope.