March Madness, Bracketology, and Selection Sunday

March Madness is in full swing, the bracketology nuts have gone through every possible 65-team scenario imaginable, and it all comes down to this: the NCAA Selection Committee's final decisions on Selection Sunday. This - a place in the brackets of the NCAA Basketball Tournament - is where the 30-plus game schedules of hundreds of teams have been directed for the last several months. But there is only room for 65. And after the four conference championships scheduled for Sunday are complete, the NCAA Selection Committee will release the seeds for the 2010 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament - and March Madness will have officially kicked into high gear.

Bracketology is the study of the NCAA Basketball Tournament brackets and attempting to predict the final outcome of all the various games (commonly used in pools and other methods of contest and gambling). Everyone seems to have their own method of choosing - or 'system'- the bracket winners, usually leaning toward their personal favorite teams and those with the best win-loss records. But there are those that follow the statistics of bracketology, where the teams are seeded according to ranking and strength of schedule, and make their picks of potential winners in accordance with higher probability. And then there is the blind 65, where bracketology is all about the seed numbers, without the bias that name recognition, team ranking, season performance, or personal feelings can generate while making the choices for bracket winners. There are those that throw caution to the wind and attempt to push a cinderella, dark horse, or overly optimistic upset scenario in the brackets. Although exciting, a bracketology method employing an upset strategy is statistically prone to a high loss percentage, completely defeating the purpose of picking the winners. Those who choose such methods generally temper their abundance of upsets with potential high-seeded wins (and, therefore, highly probable of winning) as well.

But that is what makes March Madness and bracketology so alluring. It is the exciting possibility that out of the endless possibilities, the chance that - after the Selection Committee has set the brackets and before the first game is played - one may have picked a near perfect series of brackets (it is extremely difficult - but not impossible - to pick a perfect bracket). With the ultimate goal being choosing the national champion, it is still rather gratifying to pull a high win-loss percentage in one's brackets.

Bracketology is practiced in more than just basketball these days, but it was the brainchild of Joe Lunardi, who first started analyzing in his Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook the various teams that could make the NCAA Basketball Tournament and which teams eventually did make the tournament. Brackets can now be found all over the internet, available for download or for filling out online. Some are for fun and bragging rights; some can be entered into contests where prizes are luxury items and thousands, even millions of dollars (such as the can be found at CBSSports.com and ESPN.com).

But March Madness and the NCAA Basketball Tournament (the "Road to the Final Four") comes down to the NCAA Selection Committee, a group of guys who sequester themselves on the last weekend of conference championship week just to figure out which teams not automatically entered (the conference champions) should get in and where they should be seeded and placed to play. They then announce their selections and the 65-team bracket on Selection Sunday.

Every year the Selection Committee comes under fire by the colleges that are "on the bubble" (that area where a team might get invited to "The Big Dance" but might not) and who do not get a slot in the tournament. Every year, primarily because of teams who are denied a ticket to the NCAA Basketball Tournament on Selection Sunday, there is a very vocal appeal that the NCAA Basketball Tournament be expanded to include 70, 80, 96, or some greater number of teams than exists in the present bracket system (which would be a bracketologist's dream come true).

But March Madness brings with it the excitement of teams getting in by winning the respective conference tournaments (30 in all) - plus the Ivy League regular season champion, because the Ivy League has no conference championship tournament -- and teams getting in by being nationally ranked. Sometimes those teams are one and the same, such as #1 Kansas winning the Big 12 Conference and #6 West Virginia winning the Big East Conference Tournament. But the more teams that are ranked that do not win their respective tournaments, the more teams that are pushed off the bubble. Since there are only 34 at-large slots left after the automatic berths are filled, some season's find that bubble a very limiting place. Take for instance that the Big East Conference and the Big 12 Conference which stand to place a possible 15 teams in the tournament because of national ranking and strength of schedule considerations. Allowing for the two conference champions, those two conferences take up an additional thirteen slots, leaving only 21 at large positions. And then there are the other multiple team placing conferences like the ACC, the Big 10.

Anticipation rises as Selection Sunday approaches. The college basketball season comes down to this. On Selection Sunday, every NCAA Men's Basketball fan is set to hear how the brackets have been aligned for the tournament. Will their favorite team be there? If so, where will they be placed and which team will they have to play to advance? What method of bracketology should be used this season to win the office pool?

Welcome to March Madness...

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For viewable and printable brackets, plus articles on bracketology, go to CBSSports.com and click under "Brackets."

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Source:

CBSSports.com