Filling out your March Madness bracket(s) is an art form. And like oil painting, ice sculpture, opera or other forms of high art, there is science involved — you have to mix your blues and greens with the right ratios, understand the melting point of frozen water, make sure your altos and basses don’t have to sing outside natural ranges. But the science isn’t really the point.
The number one mistake I see from people filling out their brackets make is to think they have figured it out. A ton of math goes into Bracketology, and there is a whole industry of sports media-mathematicians who crunch numbers all season to figure out seeding, proper placements and matchups that go into such massive bracket before the madness begins.
Keywords: before, and madness. All the bracket math goes into the creating the field that us plebeians then hopelessly try to predict. If you actually wanted to take a mathematical approach to picking your bracket, you should unironically go completely chalk and pick every one-seed to make the final four. But that is so. unbelievably. boring.
You need to believe in your bracket, but belief is generally not something humans achieve with rock-solid scientific calculus; your bracket should be something you can live with and want to root for. Do you think an eleven seed has an awesome mascot and great colors and thus should make the final four? That is your genuine right and privilege. Think your alma matter is drastically underrated and thus you pick them to crack the Elite 8? That is, frankly, your obligation.
Beyond all the statistical analysis, matchup data, seeding and historical precedent, you need your bracket to be beautiful. Because it’s art, not a math problem. Here are the five mistakes to avoid making it ugly, boring or worst of all: not fun.
1. Don’t make more than one bracket for each tournament
There are two March Madnesses, men’s and women’s. Both are awesome, both deserve a bracket made with care and artistic direction. But they do not deserve multiple brackets each. Such a behavior is anathema to the beauty of the madness.
Imagine if Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t sure of himself, so he painted the Mona Lisa five times and all of them were displayed at the Louvre for patrons to decide which one was the best. Imagine if James Joyce wrote Ulysses seven times and published all seven versions? Imagine if I wasn’t sure which five mistakes to choose for this article and wrote three different versions and we published all three?
The beauty of March Madness is choice, ironclad and unchangeable, that leads to bragging rights and eternal glory — all of which is nullified if you create multiple brackets and thus have more bites at the apple. How do you root for your bracket when you have 19 of them? While watching Tennessee-UConn, are you cheering for both teams when they score? Are we crazy?
Many people play in multiple pools, with friends, colleagues or family. All of that is fine. But you will copy and paste your single bracket into every single one of your pools as to maintain the purity of choice and proper sports rooting interest. If your pool allows you to create multiple brackets, you are in a terrible pool, and you will submit the same bracket twice in protest.
This is so, utterly, overwhelmingly my most important tip for enjoying March Madness. I promise you will be happier if you lock in with your picks and get to feel legitimately happy or sad when they succeed or fail. For the tournaments, your bracket is your hometown team. Having multiple would be like being a combo Celtics-Knicks-Raptors fan. That’s not allowed.
2. Pick your champion before you pick anything else
Most bracket pool scoring systems work on an escalating point system, in which a correct pick in each round is worth increasingly more points. Because of that, picking the Champion is by far the best way to actually win your pool — it’s worth twice as much as a Final Four pick.
My method every year is to watch lots of college basketball leading up to the tournament, identify a one or two seed that I actually enjoy watching, and pick them to go all the way before I even start filling in the rest. It’s a great way to give your bracket some identity when you’re filling it out.
You protest: uh, but what if your “champion” runs into a harder matchup than you realized when you fill out the rest? To be sure, it’s possible you picked the wrong champion, but to be also sure, if you picked a high enough seed, there shouldn’t be any games they “can’t win.”
What if I want to choose a lower seed? Well, then you do so at your own peril. See below.
3. Do not pick a seed lower than three to win it all (for both tournaments)
You are more than welcome to pick whomever you want if it makes your bracket beautiful; that’s the overriding goal of this whole project. But if you want to actually win your bracket pool, there is a hard and fast rule you must follow: top three seeds.
This is as close to a statistical lock as you’re going to get in a single elimination tournament. Here are some factoids: top three seeds have won 35 of the last 40 men’s tournaments since the 64-team format in 1985. Top three seeds have won literally every single women’s tournament since the field expanded to 64 in 1994.
One and two seeds have won such a high percentage of tournaments that you’re probably not being serious if you pick a three seed either, but I’ll allow it. That is the thesis behind tip number two: picking your champ right away. If it’s a one or two (or three) seed, it’s a fine pick. If it’s lower, best of luck.
4. Don’t shy away from some personal picks in the first two rounds — it’s way more fun
If you went to a certain school, have a family connection to a school, have a pillowcase with a certain school’s mascot on it that was very important to you when you were a child … or whatever: it is totally fine to pick some outlandish upsets based on that. Do it, because you’ll feel good about it no matter what.
I went to Tufts, a division three school, so I don’t have the alma mater pick: but if a team from Massachusetts makes it in (I was really pulling for Merrimack or Boston University to make the Big Dance, RIP) you know I’m picking them to beat some four seed because #ThisIsMarch. I’d encourage you all to do the same.
A word of warning, though. It is super unlikely for a 16 or 15 seed to beat a one or two seed in the first round. It has happened, but it really doesn’t happen often (basically ever); if you have a connection to a 15 or 16 seed school, maybe… consider your options more seriously.
5. Don’t try to be in too many bracket pools — try to make one super-pool
This is a little bonus tip, but it worked for me last year: see if you can co-opt as many people in your life as you can into a single pool. Combine family and friends and acquaintances and a waiter who was really nice the other night, whoever. Because having people in your pool say “who is that who picked Purdue dominating?” and then learning about a whole new aspect of your social life is actually pretty fun.
Better yet: see if you can get all these people in a group chat together and be the catalyst for glorious social interaction. Armed with their singular, glorious brackets, everyone can use sports as the hub of social good that it was always supposed to be. And if it’s a disaster and people hate each other, it’s all over by mid-April!