Picking The NCAA March Madness Brackets The Right Way

Even the most steadfast anti-gambling individual probably wager on things from time to time.

Fantasy football. That is a wager.

Those Super Bowl squares? Illegal betting!

The office wager on what exact date the pregnant co-worker will give birth? Gambling!

Then when March comes, you have those NCAA March Madness brackets to fill out. Sorry, those too are-technically-illegal gambling! But who cares, in some states it is illegal to fall asleep in the bathtub, so some laws on the books are viewed with a wink and a nod.

March Madness is one of the most wagered on event in the country. It rivals the Super Bowl, but in terms of gambling it is like comparing apples to oranges.

With the Super Bowl people wager on the winner or various prop bets. Almost every Super Bowl party has where people pick random squares at $1, $5, $10 or more per square, depending on how the degree of adventure, wealthy or stupidity you and your guest possess.

Once all the squares are filled in, numbers are randomly drawn for one team, they are placed on the top for one team and then the numbers are drawn again and placed on the left corner of the grid for the other team. Then the person who matches the correct numbers to the end of the first, second, third and fourth quarters wins the money.

So for instance in the first quarter of the last Super Bowl, the Pittsburgh Steelers scored a field goal and held the Arizona Cardinals scoreless, so the score was 3-0 after one quarter. So the individual who had a “3″ for Pittsburgh and a “0″ for Arizona won that quarter. In the second quarter, the Steelers scored 14 to the Cardinals 7. Because only numbers 0-9 are drawn, the number that wins is the last number. Therefore the person who had “4″ for the Steelers and “7″ for the Cardinals would have won the second quarter pot.

Squares is a form of private betting, but is just a dent in the overall betting on the Super Bowl, which is filtered through a sports book. In addition to being able to bet against the line (who is favored in the game), a bettor can wager on such strange bets such as which team will win the coin toss, which team will score first and which team will turn the ball over first. There are scores of these, called prop bets, and with each year comes new ones.

With March Madness, it is different. Certainly while people bet the line, as they do in all sports, more money is filtered through private brackets leaving Vegas holding out their hand like a little kid that got his candy taken away from him.

It is also much easier for people to gamble through the NCAA March Madness brackets. They do not have to fly to Las Vegas, find a sports book or anything along those lines, they simply form a group of friends through some money together and fill out a bracket.

Filling out a bracket is part of Americana. Each year, when March dawns, web sites and cable news networks feature bosses whining about the productivity decline in their offices during the month of March. This is obviously due to the brackets being filled out and workers sneaking internet peaks at the scores or watching the games via the web from their desks once the games begin.

So you do your homework, you slave over the computer or bracket sheet and the results are always the same: Marge from accounting, who does not know a basketball from a hockey puck, wins the office NCAA March Madness bracket pool because she just loved North Carolinas colors.

Now where do you go from here? You listen to the talking heads on CBS in the Selection Special, you listen to Dukey V-errr-Dick Vitale and company over on ESPN top help you fill out your brackets and you consult countless team and basketball web sites to get your answers.

Hell, you even spent more time on your NCAA March Madness bracket then you did on your taxes this year-and you ended up in the red for both!

Bracketology has become a science of its own.

So what should a novice look for and a seasoned bracket pro do to improve themselves?

UPSET SPECIAL?

First, try to avoid going gaga over the upset.

Yes an upset is terrific to watch-unless you have picked the favorite, and your first instinct may be to pick many upsets in the first round so you can cheer for the upsets, but upsets are much rarer than you think.

Take this past NCAA tournament for instance, there were no shocking upsets. Sure there were some upsets of higher seeds as the seeds got lower ranked, but the one or two amazing and earth shattering upsets which we have seen in other tournaments were missing this year.

The problem becomes when we hear the statistics about how many 13s upsets 4s and a 12 always seems to upset a 5 every year. With this in mind, we feel we must pick an upset.

This feeds into another common misconception that if your first round is bad, you will lose your bracket competition.

This is not true.

If you pick most of the favorites and a few of the lessers get knocked off (a number one has never lost in the first round and a number two has only gone down a handful of times since the field was expanded to 64), you can recover quickly in the second round because the favorites that advanced in the first round usually take care of business against the surprise teams in the second round, or if not then, in the second weekend of the tournament.

So with that said, one should probably stay away from picking a Cinderella. The definition of a Cinderella is a team that comes out of nowhere to advance far in the tournament with no prior warning.

A Cinderella is not a Michigan State type team, who went all the way to the Final game even though most thought, coming out of a weak Big Ten, they would not go very far.

Some people picked the Spartans, who have a tournament pedigree, but it was not as big of a gamble as if you picked a small school such as Cleveland State, who won their first game and fell in the second round.

If you picked the Vikings in the first round, you looked like a hero when they defeated Wake Forest, but if you had them going farther, you looked like a fool because a great first round can turn into horrible further rounds if you picked the lower seeds to advance far.

WHO DEY?

Conversely do not automatically think a team is better than another because of the name.

For instance, this past March, there was an 8-9 matchup with Ohio State and Siena in the opening round. Thinking an 8-9 matchup could go either way, your first inclination may be to pick the Buckeyes over the Saints because-well we know Ohio State. We know they are in Columbus, Ohio. We know they have trouble winning the big game in both basketball and football. We know their name.

We do not know Siena. Who? Where? How did we even know their nickname is the Saints?

For the record, Siena is located in Albany, New York and defeated Ohio State 74-72.

But how many of us, who knew nothing about the roster of the Saints or the Buckeyes actually picked Ohio State on the basis of name recognition?

Also for the record, Siena nearly toppled the top overall seed Louisville in the next round, ultimately losing 79-72.

WHERE ARE THEY?

Let us keep the Siena-Ohio State game in play here for another brief moment as we discuss another aspect-location of the game.

The Buckeyes lost that game when the game was being played in Dayton, Ohio, just 66 miles away from their home campus and the Spartans lost the title game in their home state, becoming the first team to do this in 16 years.

So location plays a part in some games, but if a team is better, it usually will show through no matter where they play.

HOW ARE THEY DOING?

Another factor may be how to determine how the teams played leading up to the tournament. If they slumped near the end of the season, including the conference tournament, be cautious, do not necessarily rule them out, but pay special attention to those streaking at the end-this may be a preview of what the tournament will hold for them. They are winning at the right time of the year and that may transfer into the postseason.

In the bigger conferences such as the Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, Pac-10 and others, the conference tournaments are nice, but do not really mean much, especially for conferences like the Big Ten who conclude their tourneys just hours before the Selection Show airs and sometimes the winners of the conference tournament are not ranked highly because they were seeded in the tournament prior to their conference tournament ending.

So with that in mind, be weary of conference tournament champions. Not many of the big leagues yielded the same regular season and conference tournament champion, and while a team would love to capture their tournament championship, with the NCAA tournament looming, it may not be the highest of priorities. The tournament champion, who has not won the regular season title may last a few rounds, but that is usually about it.

I HAVE TO DO RESEARCH?

No one likes to do research if they are not required to by a teacher or a boss, but doing some will benefit you in the long run. Go further than looking at each team on its own, delve into each team’s players and statistics.

Look at the leading scorers and see how they did against teams with winning records. Compare their statistic to their opponents and form an opinion on how you feel they will match up.

Compare and contrast how the team has done against a good defensive team and a good offensive team and keep that in mind as you advance a particular team in each round.

CAN WE FINALLY CONCLUDE THIS?

So perhaps we have touched on some common misconceptions in which people filling out brackets buy into and maybe, just maybe Marge will go down next year!

Still, we wouldn’t count on it!

As always have fun and bet wisely.

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