Madness

March madness leads to office pools.

Even non sports-fans can get into March madness. And they can win! Why is that? Why can non-experts win?

The problem is this. The committee that seeds the tournament are already experts. They rank each group of 16 from 1 to 16, with 1 being the team that has performed the best and is perceived the best.

So, given a lack of information, a non sports-fan can simply pick the higher seed each time.

But if you want to be an expert, you want to show how smart you are. This means you need to pick upsets. But I have no more sensible ways of picking an upset than a combination of superstition and intuition. The more upsets I pick, the more likely I pick the wrong one. And picking the wrong one can be like a double whammy. I can fail to pick an upset, and pick an upset when none occurred.

I had thought, just on raw intuition, that Siena might win its game over Vanderbilt. But I really had no good reason to pick the 13th seed over the 4th. So I didn't. Yet, Siena won.

UConn losing? UConn is a traditional powerhouse. I picked wrong again. Now, I could have paid more attention to location of the tournament, trying to figure out who played at home. That is a somewhat reasonable way to pick upsets.

The really tough way to pick upsets is to analyze 64 teams. Who has great guard play? Who has decent speed? Who has good interior play?

Well, I haven't seen many of these games, so I am literally guessing, and guessing against the committee.

And yet, I feel so guilty picking the favorites, which requires no effort at all. I'd rather pick upsets. Well, at least, early on. I, being a chicken, pick the favorites to go really deep, because history says this will happen, and because who knows which upset to pick. There are literally dozens of choices.

OK, we know that George Mason was a really long shot two years ago, and few would sensibly pick them over anyone else. But think about Florida. Who would have picked Florida that year either?

My brackets are a mess, at least, in the first round, and yet, there's an outside chance that if my main pick does well, I could still win it all.

In that respect, a good game lets you do badly at the start, with a chance at the end. And that's as much as you can ask for.