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You’ll hear a lot over the next few days about foolproof, guaranteed ways to fill out a perfect NCAA bracket. I’m here to tell you that they’re all bogus. Anyone who knows how to win their bracket pool every year would be an idiot to tell you their secret. So this isn’t going to be one of those articles. Instead, I’m going to give you five ways not to fill out your bracket as an appetizer to my actual bracket article, to come on Monday. It’s more fun this way, I think.
1. Base your picks on mascots.
This is the stereotypical way to fill out your bracket if you don’t know anything about basketball. Who needs facts and figures when you can just decide between a lion and a volunteer, right? The only problem with this is that there are plenty of soft teams with names like Bulldogs and Tigers, and plenty of power teams with names like Orangemen and Jayhawks.
They don't always go chalk like this.
2. Base your picks on seeding.
If you have your bracket going chalk all the way to the Final Four, there’s a good chance you’re going to get a lot of games wrong. High seeds are usually a pretty safe bet in the early rounds, but anyone who’s watched the tournament before can tell you that a year without upsets is an unusual year. You can usually count on a 13 or 14 seed winning at least a game and causing some chaos. If you need proof, look no further than George Mason, an 11 seed in 2006 that marched all the way to the Final Four, and destroyed millions of brackets in the process (including mine – I had Connecticut winning the whole thing).
3. Base your picks on win-loss records.
They mean something, sure, but not a whole lot once you get to the tournament. It doesn’t matter if a team went 32-0 or 16-16 in the regular season. Once you get to the Big Dance, you’re 0-0. Wins and losses tend to be a misleading statistic, anyway. A team might have a record of 29-4, say, but if they’re squeaking out close win after close win, you have to imagine that’s going to catch up with them sooner or later. There’s no worse time to find yourself on the wrong end of a close game than March.
4. Base your picks on endless statistics.
I’ve fallen victim to this more than once. It’s tempting to compile a gigantic database of statistics and feel like you know more than anyone else in your pool. I did this two years ago, spending two solid weeks compiling what I felt were impeccable picks, only to watch my bracket fall to pieces after two rounds. Statistics are a good thing, and they can help you see things you might not notice when watching the game, but it’s easy to over-rely on them. Put it this way – if your stats tell you that Marist is a mortal lock to win their first-round game over Syracuse, you might need to check your numbers again.
5. Follow your heart.
This is a sure-fire way to destroy your bracket. Everyone loves an underdog, and it’s easy to let them steal your heart and run away with your bracket. While we’ve seen low-seeded teams make heroic runs, remember, it’s the exception rather than the rule. Even worse, avoid riding your alma mater to the finals unless you went to a school like Kansas or North Carolina. I love my alma mater, but I’m not picking BYU to make a Final Four run this year.
One more thing to remember: no one knows a perfect way to fill out a bracket. It’s unpredictable. Getting 70% of the games right is a real accomplishment. So don’t beat yourself up if your bracket falls apart early. Just watch the games and enjoy the ride. And if all else fails, make fun of people who use these tricks to put their brackets together.
This reminds me of when a friend spent an entire weekend shouting “BUCKNELL!” It became kind of a joke to us, until, well, let’s just say it was 2005.