The Time is STILL Nigh

...continued from earlier post

This post is long...very long. Any novices out there may be intimidated, but don't be. Playing actually only takes 3-5 minutes. And here's the thing, your picks are just as valid as the next person's. Let me try and ease your worry.

Remember this: everyone who plays will try and pick a perfect bracket, but this never happens. Everyone makes wrong picks. So don't worry about making a wrong pick.

Still not convinced? Alright, well think about this. For a small time commitment (3-5 minutes), you could be playing a fantasy sport game for three weeks. It takes so little and you are playing for so long. And you'd be participating in something that you may have known nothing about previously. Think of this as the start of a new knowledge base that only takes a couple of minutes of work. Where else can you better your self with so little effort?

To me, NCAA Pick 'em is the simplest, easiest, and most fun fantasy game available. And it can be played by everyone. And everyone who plays has an equal opportunity for success. Whether you are an adult professional that isn't interested in sports or a little kid that wants to feel like a a grown-up, this is the game for you.

I don't try and get people to play any other fantasy sport. Fantasy Baseball has a daily time requirement and should only be played by those who are die-hard sports fans. But Pick 'em can be played by people of all skill level and can be played all across the country, even the across the world. I hope, you'll give it a try.

Now if you still want a little advice about making picks, there are a few starter rules. These tips are if it's your first time to play. Veterans usually have a more sophisticated view of how picks should be made such as the author of this article. But for novices, here are a few jumping off points to make your bracket a little more competitive:

Pick A High Seeded Champ

The champion of the tourney is usually one of the higher seeds. It's been a number 1 seed twelve times & has dipped below number 3 only three times since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985. The last time it dipped below 3 was eight years ago when a number 4 won it all.

Keep The Final Four Around 11

If you add up all of the seeds of the Final Four teams in a given year, the average over the last 21 years is a little below 10 (9.95). Usually the Final Four is comprised of two number 1 seeds and two teams seeded 2-5.

Think Big Picture First

Fill in your Championship and Final Four teams first and then work backward. Teams in these two categories your are teams that you are (hopefully) going to be rooting for for the next three weeks. You want to be happiest with them. First round games are fun to get right, but in order to win, you need your picks to be right in the latter rounds.

Watch As Much Of The First Weekend As You Can

The first weekend is the most fun. The teams are whittled from 64 to 32 in two days and then from 32 to 16 in the next two days. Three-quarters of the teams are gone in the span of a weekend. And with each elimination, your bracket could be teetering on destruction.

Trust me, you may never have watched college basketball in your life, but after you fill out a bracket (which only takes a few minutes to do) you will be right there cheering like you have been following the teams all season. And if you can watch the games with someone you are playing against, then all the better.

So as we close in on another tournament, I extend to you an invitation. I want you to play in a league with me. Usually I pick one bracket an enter it into several leagues so I can only worry about one scenario. Each of the leagues I play in is a group of people I know. I have one for work, one for my in-laws, on for some friends I have in town, and so on. If I can fit you into one of these leagues, I will. If not, I'll start a new league.

Or if you are starting a group on your own, I'd love to join. So consider this as everyone's open invitation as well as my open acceptance to your invite. For those of you in leagues past, remind me of your participation as well as members that I may have forgotten. For those that have never played, send me a "post of intent" and I will set about setting things up.

And to all of you, good luck. May your picks be accurate and may your Final Four be intact through the first weekend.

The Next Post Promises To Be Better,

James

The Time Is Nigh

Dear Avid Reader,

The time has come. The most exciting time of the year.

March Madness

Some of you may not know what March Madness is. I will enlighten you.

What Are You Talking About?

March Madness is a term applied to a collegiate basketball tournament. There is an organization called the NCAA. It is comprised of over a thousand schools. These schools are placed in divisions based on size. The biggest schools are placed in Division 1-A. There are 334 of these schools.

These 334 schools are further divided into Conferences. There are 32 Conferences within Division 1-A. Each of the Conferences have varying numbers of member schools. Membership is usually based loosely on regions of America, such as the PAC-10 Conference being made up of schools that are along the Pacific Coast and members of the SEC being made up of schools located in the southeastern part of the country.

With such a large body of schools, it is hard to determine who the best basketball team is nationally. In order to figure this out, the NCAA holds a tournament to determine the best basketball team in the country. This tournament is sometimes called March Madness. Why is it "madness", I'll tell you.

It's maddening because of the scale. The tournament is played by 65 teams. 65 teams! It's HUGE!

The Tournament Selection Committee makes the field up by first including the winners of each conference's tournament (excluding the Ivy League which doesn't have a tournament). These are called automatic bids. The Selection Committee then decides of the remaining 85 schools, who are the best 33? These are called at-large bids.

And this is where a lot of controversy takes place. While there are a lot of ESPN analysts that will yell and proclaim that one school was unjustly excluded or another school was foolishly included, most of this is ignored. The fact that the top 19% of the eligible teams get in the tourney removes the argument that potentially deserving teams are left out. Arguing over who should be ranked as the 65th best team and who is the 66th best team is essentially meaningless. So long as the really good teams get in (read the top 20 or 25), no one cares about the teams that limp in.

Another argument starter is the seeding of the teams. All 65 teams are given a rank from 1 (the highest) to 16 (the lowest and there are five teams given this rank). These ranks are called seeds. The idea being that the teams rated a 1 should have the easier path to the championship than those ranked lower than them. The field is then divided into four brackets and the games are arranged thusly:

1 vs 16
8 vs 9

5 vs 12
4 vs 13

3 vs 14
6 vs 11

7 vs 10
2 vs 15

The winner of the 1 vs 16 game will play the winner of the 8 vs 9 game and so on until there is only one team left from this bracket. The winner of this bracket will go on to play the winner from one of the other three brackets and so on until there is one champion.

The initial placement of the teams also causes ESPN analysts to curse and yell, but again this argument is usually forgotten after a few days. The idea of the tournament is that the champion must win all of their games. If a team loses, then they lost and they are not the champion. The "philosophy of the scoreboard" prevails.

So now we get down to the nitty gritty. What is the big deal? Why are so many people tuning into this tournament? The reason is because of a wonderful and awesome game that everyone plays. We'll call this game "Pick 'em".

In Pick 'em, a player tries to predict the course of the tournament. In essence, the player tries to accurately predict the outcome of the tournament's 63 games before any of them are ever played. This may seem mountainous at first, but in reality, with the help of computers, the game takes only a few minutes of figuring. Here's out it works.

Let's look at the bracket from above. Let's say that Duke is ranked #1, Holy Cross #16, Arkansas #8, and Cincinnati #9. Let's say, for whatever reason, you pick Duke to win its game over Holy Cross and Cincy to win over Arkansas. You now have Duke facing Cincy in the second round. So you decide to pick Duke over Cincy. You now have Duke heading into the third round. Let's say that based on some of your other picks, you have Duke facing #4 N. C. State in the third round. You decide that N.C. State wins this match-up and proceeds in to the fourth round. This process continues until you pick the final game and a champion.

Now if your picks end up happening, then you will win points. You receive 1 point for an accurate 1st round pick, 2 for a second round pick, 4 for a third round pick, 8 for the fourth and so on until you reach 32 points for a correct champion pick. In the earlier example, if your picks were right you'd get 1 for Duke over Holy Cross, 1 for Cincy over Arkansas, 2 for Duke over Cincy, and 4 for N.C. State over Duke for a total of 1+1+2+4 = 8 points.

The ultimate goal is to accumulate more points than whomever you are playing against. This type of scoring favors accurate later round picks and championship picks. So picking your champion is the most important pick, as are your Final Four teams.

But if your picks end up not hapening, then you will not get any points. And if have planned a team to go very far into the toruney and they end up losing early on, it could be disastrous for your overall score.

continued...