You’ve spent the whole season glued to the scores and rankings. You’ve memorized players’ names and stats. Selection Sunday has come and gone, and now it’s time for March Madness — and you feel certain that your uber-informed NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament bracket will dominate the work poll.
Or maybe not.
Perhaps you haven’t watched a single minute of college basketball this season and don’t recognize half the schools’ names. You still want to participate for fun and potential glory but don’t know where to start.
There’s some indication that looking at seeding, stats and momentum can boost your chances of picking all the winners, but filling out a bracket isn’t an exact science.
“(It takes) a lot of luck, to be honest. It’s funny, I’ve been doing this for years, and the people who seem to know the most about college basketball don’t always have the best bracket,” said Derek Peluso, director of slots and sports at Rivers Casino Pittsburgh. “That’s what makes this tournament so exciting, right?”
So if March Madness is controlled chaos, why not have a little fun with it? Here are some weird ways to make your picks before the tourney kicks off on Thursday.
Mascot fight!
Sports Illustrated published its annual ranking of the qualified teams’ mascots on Monday. Approaching each matchup by considering which mascot would win in a fight adds an extra layer of fun to choosing teams. Or, if you prefer, you can go by team nickname instead.
For example, the matchup between Louisville (8-seed) and Creighton (9-seed) is practically a tossup, by the numbers — and their associated animals are equally hard to choose between. Cardinals vs. Bluejays? Which one is tougher?
This method does have its downsides. There are four Cougars and three Tigers in the tournament, so how do you choose if they go up against each other? On the other hand, just imagine the 14-seed Lipscomb Bison taking on the 3-seed Iowa State Cyclones and then saying this isn’t the best way to make picks.
For the pacifists out there, it’s also possible — but probably more challenging — to go by which mascot is cuter.
Proximity to Pittsburgh
Southwestern Pennsylvania is fortunate — Robert Morris University in Moon has qualified for the NCAA tournament and will play 2-seed Alabama in the first round. But if you’re a real homer, why not choose by looking at each school’s distance from Pittsburgh?
This also may not necessarily lead to success, since the four 1-seed schools, Auburn (located in Alabama), Florida, Duke (located in North Carolina) and Houston (located in Texas) are all situated a lot farther away than 15-seed RMU. But upsets happen every year, and it’s all about picking the right ones.
True Colors
Another at-a-glance formula for filling out a bracket is choosing by team colors. Whether it’s about which team wears your favorite color or the most aesthetically pleasing chromatic combo, this can prove to be just as predictive as any system.
However, USA Today warns that if you have one particular favorite color, this probably isn’t the way for you: a team that wears purple hasn’t won the championship since 1947.
On the other hand, blue and red — much more common colors for teams to sport on the court — are safer bets.
Turn things upside-down
It’s always important to predict a few upsets, or lower seeds beating out higher seeds to advance in the tournament. Just two years ago, 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson beat 1-seed Purdue in the first round, 63-58.
So why not flip the script completely and give an all-upsets bracket a shot?
One Reddit user employs this strategy each year. “I always have a bracket that’s nothing but upsets. All of the 16 seeds in the final four. Most years it ends up being one of my best brackets.”
Rooting for an underdog will definitely make first-round viewing more exciting. Sure, the lowest-ranked team to ever win the NCAA championship was 8-seed Villanova in 1985, but there’s a first time for everything.
If all else fails, flip a coin
This one may not seem so weird — ESPN even gives you the option to randomly autofill your bracket on their site. But there are lots of ways to randomize.
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Try rolling a die, doing “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” or, as NPR suggests, having your pet pick by wrapping a piece of paper with each team’s name around their favorite treat and seeing which one they go for.
The NCAA itself reports that no one in the history of the men’s basketball tournament has ever verifiably made a perfect bracket. The odds of doing so are about 1 in 9.2 quintillion if you just go by a coin flip. But mysterious things always happen in this tournament — that’s why they call it March Madness, after all.