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Garcia: Tips for filling out your tournament bracket
▶ AUSTIN GARCIA @Austin_TG1.5
Associated Press norship game
Associated Press In this April 4, 2016, file photo, Villanova head coach Jay Wright celebrates after the NCAA Final Four tournament college basketball championship game against North Carolina, in Houston. Jay Wright recounts Villanova's national championship run in his new book, "Attitude." (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)
March is one of the most exciting times of the year for the sports world because of the NCAA tournament. It's intense, entertaining, miraculous, heart-jolting or heart-breaking for loyal fans, hence why it's dubbed "March Madness."
There is always a game on television, and any game has the potential to be the unbelievable game of the century.
Other than supporting your main team, the fun of March Madness is filling out a bracket. According to ESPN, 11.57 million people, some of them not even sports fans, filled out an NCAA tournament bracket through their website. Some did it for the thrill, while others did it for bragging rights or money.
Former President of the United States Barack Obama even took the time to fill out a bracket every year, although President Donald Trump declined to ESPN this year to keep this newly acquired tradition alive.
However, of those millions of brackets last year on ESPN's Tournament Challenge, after two days only .0024 percent of brackets remained perfect.
Here are some tips from someone who has tossed out his bracket after the second day, to being a three-time champion in a league with over 200 people.
Although filling out a bracket can't be perfected by science, there are certain things you can do, based on history, to have a better chance of winning your friends league, work league, family league or ESPN NCAA Tournament Challenge.
GENERAL TIPS:
Make a bracket with more than seven upsets and a bracket with less than five upsets. Also, in one of those brackets, have your favorite team win it all, because you don't want to be that person that didn't have their team winning it all and then it happens that they win it all, and on the other, a team you believe has the potential to win it all.
Don't be that person that spends thousands of
TIPS FOR THE ROUND OF 64 TEAMS:
dollars or bets their house on a bracket (yes it happens). March Madness can win you some money, but don't go overboard. A person flipping a coin can have just as great of a chance as someone who maps out each scenario.
Upsets are what make March Madness so interesting. However, a No.1
seed has never lost to a No. 16 seed. Picking an upset at this level of the bracket is not the place to do it. If you are going to pick an upset, a prime spot to do so would be the No. 5 versus the No. 12 and/or the No. 7 versus the No. 10.
Another interesting stat is a No.9 seed has beaten a No.8 seed more times than they have lost. It would be smart to pick the No.9 seed in two of the regions (Midwest, West,
East, and South) and the No.8 seed in the other two regions.
TIPS FOR THE FINAL FOUR:
Having all four No.1 seeds reach the final four is extremely rare. It has only happened one time, back in 2008. Do not put all No.1 seeds in the Final Four. The No.9 and 10 seeds have not reached the Final Four since 1985 when the league expanded to 64 teams.
Who should you put in the Final Four? A happy combination to put into the Final Four would be a maximum of two No.1 seeds, a No.2 seed and either another No.2 seed or a No.3 seed.
A No. 1 seed vs. a No. 2 seed seems to be the combination that works for me. The No.1 seed has won the tournament 52 percent of the time, therefore choosing a No.1 seed is the logical decision to win it all.
TIPS FOR THE CHAM-
PIONSHIP:
March Madness can make you feel on top of the world, or down in the pits. Don't miss out on the fun of filling out a bracket because you don't know where to start.
-Edited by Paola Alor
The types of people who fill out March Madness brackets
> CHRISTIAN S. HARDY
@ByHardy
THE DISHONEST
These are the ones who fill out 10 brackets — an upset bracket, a favorite team bracket, a no upsets bracket, a coin flip bracket, and whatever else they can find to be more and more wrong. Then, when one of those 10 is doing well, you won't hear the end of how they picked a No. 15 seed over a No. 2 seed and had every other upset right on one bracket. These are the people who actually believe that making a good March Madness bracket makes you look like a college basketball god. Breaking news: it doesn't. It just makes you lucky. If you make more than one bracket, and if you ever call more than one bracket your "main bracket," you are an insufferable human.
THE STATISTICIAN
There is some overlap between the statistician and the gambler, except the statistician actually likes basketball and has a soul. Statisticians also can sometimes stay quiet, keeping their obscure Ken Pomeroy numbers about Vanderbilt's offensive steal rate and Butler's free-throw rate to themselves. Certainly, plenty of people will lean on Ken Pomeroy to pick their bracket, but then there are those who believe tournament history and stats from the last four tournaments will dictate how this one goes and those who base their brackets on tournament history. These people usually don't cheer for a team, but at least they have more of a spine than the gamblers.
THE CLUELESS
These people don't know anything about how basketball works or the teams in the NCAA tournament, which is all good and well. But the clueless are only truly recognized when they begin to brag about their aloofness. They use coin flips, mascots, and team colors to choose their winners. But they especially won't shut up about how they used coin flips and mascots to make those choices because they just don't care about sports. Their gall approach takes five steps up on the annoying scale when their bracket actually starts doing well, and they keep reminding you, "I don't even know anything sports!"
THE GAMBLER
This person has absolutely no rooting interest, unless they have money on something, whether it be an over-under or the game result itself. These people are gambling on individual games, and digging for every sliver of information on the two teams in any game. These are also the people who go beyond the analysts and experts and their typical Cinderella picks and land on their own, usually dictated by Vegas odds. This person has mostly sold their soul to sports, but they have the highest highs and lowest lows of anyone else on this list.
NEOSHO COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Without a shadow of a doubt, their favorite team is the champion in this person's bracket, without even checking out the other 67 teams. Of course, there's some validity in that when you're a Kansas basketball fan. But this strategy has less validity for your friend, a Wichita State (a 10 seed) fan, or your other friend, a Kansas State (11 seed) fan. Beyond how annoying it is for a fan of a mediocre team to actually believe their team will make it in this crapshoot of a tournament, it's completely non-sensical to beilieve their team can even make it to the Elite Eight every time they're in the tournament — nonetheless win it all.
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March Madness is unavoidable. Some 70 million brackets are filled out every year compared to 129 million votes in the presidential election.Most businesses have office pools for their employees to try to win a pot and over $9 billion was gambled, both legally and illegally, on the NCAA tournament last year.
When something is that popular, naturally some of those people participating are going to be unbearable. That's just the way the world works.
"Look how many people are here. Some of you are sh-y people, there's no question," Aziz Ansari said in his 2012 stand-up "Dangerously Delicious" in front of a crowd of less than 2,000. That's about where I find myself with. March Madness — surrounded by people who are utterly annoying with their bracket "formula" that no one but themselves cares about.
Only two things are similar between all of these types people: They are going to be wrong a lot, and they are irritating beyond belief. And if you haven't recognized these people before,you certainly will once they've been identified.
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