Honest Bracketology for March Madness

It's March Madness time! The time to pretend you are a bigger sports fan than you really are. I will break down the main strategies we all take while pretending what we all know about college basketball.

1. Pick a Champ

This is usually the first step we all take. We pick which number 1 or 2 seed we can just write all the way to the little line in the center of the page titled "champion". There a few different ways to pick your winner each year. Some people select who they think the best number 1 seed is. Some try to figure out which team has been the hottest against the toughest competition at the end of the year...an advanced strategy. Some will just listen to the experts and pick whoever the most sports writers select. My strategy is to pick the champ in the beginning of the season. I will see what team is hyped up at the beginning of the year and let them play a few games. It seems to me that whoever is number one at the end of the season doesnt usually win the whole thing, so I like picking teams that used to be number one. This year my pick is Ohio St.

2. Pick obvious winners

Once you fill in your champ all the way to the end, then you pick your obvious winners in certain rounds. All your number ones go to second round, probably all your number 2's because you are too scared to pick such a big upset despite there being a good chance it could happen. Most of us are two big of babies to have any 3 seed lose also.

3. Pick some upsets

One thing is certain in the NCAA tournament. There will be upsets. So you can not just pick all the best seeds and be safe. You need to have some of those upsets pegged if you want to try to win your office pool. This is when the BS really kicks in. We actually try to evaluate if VCU can beat Duke or if George Washington can beat Vanderbilt. Have any of us watched a VCU or George Washington game? I know I haven't. I will pretend I know what I am talking about when i write in VCU and GW though. Why? Because I, like you, heard it on ESPN. This is the art of picking the upset. We listen to the experts say who they think the possible upset could be and then you pick a few of them as your own. When you do this try to get a reason from the experts on why they think an upset is possible. So when you do make a right pick you can say something smart like "Duke didn't deserve to be seeded so high, and VCU came into the tournament hot". People will really respect your sports knowledge.

4. Fill in the holes

Once the upsets are in all you have to do is fill in the holes. The ten and eleven seeds you had advance to the second round you have lose in the second round. You have the occasional three or four seed knock of a number one or two, this is usually done by picking a team with a hyped up player like Texas or something. This gives you a valid reason to think the number three has a shot at beating a higher seed.

5. Final Four

If you BS'ed your way through to the final four most of us have our champ we already picked, then one or two other number ones with a two or a three thrown in there. Sometimes a four. This is where you might have a little knowledge if you guessed right as these are the type of games you actually watched during the year. UCLA, Florida, Georgetown, Kansas. You may have a decent amount of knowledge on these teams and will be able to make an educated guess on their outcomes. Until we get to this point though, you'r guess is as good as mine.