The best part of March is here. March Madness kicks off this week, so get ready to eat, sleep and breathe college basketball for the next few weeks.
But before you get to the good stuff, you've got some work to do. It's time to put your March Madness bracket together.
For decades, people have wracked their brains trying to figure out which NCAA basketball teams would reign supreme in the Big Dance. It takes some knowledge of college basketball, some math skills and a whole lot of luck to achieve a perfect bracket. The chance of that happening is apparently one in 9.2 quintillion, just to burst your bubble. Even President Obama attempts to pick correctly every year!
But don't get too discouraged just yet. It's a new year, a new March Madness, and anything could happen. You just need a little help. Here's six tips on how to win your March Madness pool this year.
1. Know The History
As the old saying goes, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Knowing the patterns of past March Madness tournaments could help you determine who's going to win this year. USA Today has a good, albeit a little silly, round-up of how teams have fared during March Madness throughout its history. A lot of it might just be coincidence, but any help is good when you're trying to make sense of such an unpredictable competition.
2. Know The Stats
If you're not as well versed in college basketball as some of the co-workers or friends you'll be competing with in your March Madness pool, you might want to try to use some math to determine your bracket. Various publications and statisticians do this every year, but you don't have to get as crazy as they do with it. Just use their hard work as inspiration for your own bracket. Esquire put together a nice breakdown of the statistical likelihood of certain seeds winning, and if you can't trust math, what can you trust?
3. Find The Underdog
Every year, there's at least one high-seeded team that somehow makes it into the Final Four. That makes March Madness so exciting for fans but also so frustrating. Because that team isn't as highly ranked, it's obviously next to impossible to predict who it will be. However, not picking all favorites for your Final Four is probably a smart way to avoid this. There are also tons of predictions about what teams will dominate the NCAA tournament out there online, such as Bleacher Report, which has some suggestions for teams that might experience an upset (Virginia, Gonzaga) and teams that might experience a Cinderella story (Northern Iowa). Or you can just close your eyes and pick whichever one your finger lands on. Your choice.
4. Use An App
This is the 21st century, people. No longer is your only option to use pen and paper to craft your winning bracket. We have the technology. You have plenty of choices out there, but some of the best ones out there are the official NCAA March Madness app, ESPN Tournament, which lets you invite people to make brackets to compete with yours, and Bracket the Madness, which has one of the best interfaces of the digital bracket apps currently available. You got to have some style with your sports, right?
5. Enter A Bracket Contest
As previously mentioned, it's nearly impossible to create a perfect March Madness bracket. However, if you do, you will be rewarded handsomely. ESPN is offering a $20,000 Best Buy gift card and a trip to the 2015 Maui Invitational for the person that creates the top bracket. There's a FOX Bracket Challenge with some cool prizes too. Warren Buffett famously offers $1 billion to the person who creates a perfect Mach Madness bracket every year, but it's reportedly unclear if that contest will be held again this year. These contests should give you the kick in the pants you need to craft the best bracket ever.
6. Just Have Fun With It
Lighten up. Sure, March Madness is a competition, but at the end of the day, it's just sports. It's supposed to be fun, so just do your best and don't take this whole thing too seriously. March Madness comes but once a year. You better enjoy it while it lasts.
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