Bracket Busting

With the NCAA tournament set to begin tomorrow afternoon I, like about 100 million other people, filled out my own bracket the other day. Now, unlike some people I just do one bracket because I think that is the only way to truly test your knowledge of college basketball. To me there is nothing impressive about picking a bracket correctly once you have filled out five of them and done it in five different ways. All you have done in that situation is filled out every eventuality and removed all the risk, which would be like appearing on "Let's Make A Deal" and claiming victory when a glitch allowed you to open all the doors. Plus, I feel like having brackets full of different winners removes much of the viewing pleasure from the games, because sports is only fun when you are rooting for one team over another and which teams are you supposed to cheer for when you have one team winning on one of your brackets and their opponent winning on the other one? I assume it would be based on whichever bracket has done better at that point, but that is not exactly what tournament organizers had in mind. The good news is that if you are cheering based on a strong feeling about one team vs the other than that is the way you should do all your picks.

Anyway, I am always fascinated by the tactics certain people use when filling out their brackets. Obviously, some people just put their Alma Mater into the Championship Game no matter what their seed or how many superior teams they have to face along the way. But if you don't pull for a specific team (or you do but that team stinks and you are a realist), than any number of superstitions are at your disposal. My sister is a big fan of going my uniform colors and it has worked out for her in the past. My aunt sometimes goes by which state she would rather live in and has had equal success. Others go by conference allegiance, thinking a bad record could be excused by a tougher schedule than other teams. (This year that is the Big 10.) Others try to base it off past performance which is kind of insane considering the really high-level college programs are lucky to keep their best players for more than one year, which means 70% of the roster is totally different. Then there are the people who simply flip a coin because they think the randomness of the universe has the same odds of picking correctly that they do. (Please note these people are idiots and if they are ever the leader of a project you are on at work you should start updating your resume - it may never go according to seeding, but it is not random.)

The one thing I never understand are the people who feel the need to put in an absurd amount of upsets. I know that upsets are what make college sports (and more specifically this tournament) as popular as they are today. However, there are never as many upsets as we think there are going to be. After all, between a very long regular season and conference tournaments, we have had close to 40 games to figure out which are the best teams so wouldn't using that information be the smart thing to do? Instead, those upset-seekers make fun of the people who pick too many higher seeds as having no imagination when the reality is those are usually the people who take home the prize. I get the appeal of a tournament thrown into chaos by a ton of upsets because all four #1 seeds making the Final Four is boring, but at least that way we get the best basketball to the very end. (Something about the week to think about it and for the other coaches to prepare for them causes the upstart teams to shrink in the moment.) The ironic aspect to all this is that the same people who want crazy upsets never pick the right Cinderella team, so when the random team does get to the Elite Eight they are just as mad as the people who picked the favorites because both brackets are a mess.

Now, if you are looking for me to tell you who you should pick in your Final Four you should probably try another blog because your guess is as good as mine. I've got all big-conference schools in the Final Four, but there is a reason I made my picks in pencil and not pen. Thanks to one-and-done stars and smaller programs getting as much national air time as the powerhouses (which reduces that as a recruiting tool), college basketball is as even a landscape as you will find. Every sports league strives for parity, because fans who are delusional enough to think their team has a chance are what drives up ratings. But when every team is equally bad I don't know if that is the kind of level playing field these college presidents had in mind. I wouldn't be surprised to see a couple of #1 seeds make the Championship Game, but it is just as likely a team with a #7 or higher seed could make a run no "expert" saw coming. (Good news for them is that no one keeps track of how often they are wrong. They are the weathermen of the sports world.) I just know the next two days are pretty much the best ones we get on the sports calendar all year, so enjoy them - even if your Championship pick is eliminated by tomorrow night.