Fighting through the bracket mess

Okay, we have less than 24 hours to go until the start of the greatest sporting event in the world, the NCAA basketball tournament. (No, last night's "opening night game doesn't count, sorry Mt. St. Mary's) And that can only mean one thing for most people - you're busy agonizing over your bracket picks for your office pool or other contests. I've been there, and I'm here to help.

Now, this has to come with a disclaimer - I'm by no means an expert on picking the tournament, and my track record in bracket contests demonstrates that quite clearly. However, I've become much better over the years after learning from some of my own catastrophic mistakes, and I'm going to share my acquired wisdom in hopes that you might avoid some of my past fates.

First, some general guidelines:

Keep it simple, stupid
One of the biggest mistakes those of us who follow college basketball regularly make when filling out brackets is that we try to get too cute, and swing for the fences, trying to predict every single upset throughout the tournament. The end result of this strategy in most years is that you look smart for picking a couple of the big upsets, but you miss on a bunch of the others, and end up flaming out and finishing well behind that secretary whose system for picking games involves picking the team whose mascot they like the best. Look, if you're competing in ESPN's bracket challenge where there are only prizes for the top handful of finishers out of millions of entries, then yes, your best home run swing is required. You're going to need a near perfect bracket for it to be worth anything. However, in an office pool or a pool with your friends where you might be up against 25 people at most, a solid double in the gap is probably going to get the job done.

You can't win the pool on the first weekend, but you can definitely lose it
There are two ways that you can lose the pool on the first weekend of the tournament, one of which is obvious, and one of which is more subtle. The obvious way is that you can have a couple of Final Four picks go down in the first or second rounds, and maybe your champion. You'll realize immediately that your bracket is shot to hell, and it will probably reside in the garbage can by the end of the day Sunday. However, you can also lose the pool in that first weekend when a couple of your wild hunch upset picks go the wrong way, and teams you had going out in the first two rounds end up making deep runs. This results in a much more slow and painful death to your bracket, one which won't truly reveal itself until the end of the 2nd weekend, or maybe even Final Four weekend. Here's the simple truth: Unless your pool has some unusual rules, the first round is pretty much just for show, and you're much better off taking fewer first round risks in favor of keeping the big picture in mind.

Don't buy into the myth that you have go out on a limb to be successful
The average fan tends to focus on the upsets that often occur in the earlier rounds and portray the tournament as some crazy, unpredictable adventure. While there is the occassional year where all hell breaks lose, the simple reality is that by the end of the tournament, we're usually left with a fairly predictable results. There's nothing manly or sexy about picking a serious darkhorse team for a Final Four run, in fact, in most cases, it's suicidal.

And now, with those general principles in mind, here's some specific tips
Pick the top 4 seeds in each bracket to win their first round game
No number one seed has ever lost in the first round, and the first time one of them does, everyone else will miss it too. You're an idiot for picking against a 1 seed in the first round, even if one time it actually happens. You might see a #2 seed lose once every 5 or 6 tournaments. Again, there's just no need to try and be a hero picking against them. That 2 seed is way more likely to go the Final Four than to lose in the first round. It gets more tempting when you get to the 3 and 4 seeds. Invariably, 1 or 2 of these teams are going to get upset every year. So, if you have a REALLY good hunch on one of these matchups, you can play it, but no more than one. Following this tip is going to get you at least a 14-2 record in those games virtually every year, and you vastly decrease your chances of picking against an eventual Final Four team in the first round. Gunning for 16-0 in these games is too big a risk to your long term chances given the realities of the actual reward.

Don't fall in love with those 11 and 12 seeded teams
Once you get down below the 4 seeds, upsets are more common, but not as much as you might think. Generally, you're going to see maybe 2 or 3 5 and 6 seeds fall in the opening round, and so I wouldn't recommend picking more than 1 or 2 upsets in this range.

The money games in the first round are those 7 v. 10 and 8 v. 9 matchups
The 8 v. 9 matchups have always been coinflip games, and the 7 v. 10 matchups have become more so in the last few years. So, rather than spending a lot of energy trying to come up with the big upsets, you're better off trying to distinguish yourself in these matchups. The thing that makes these matchups particularly attractive is missing them probably isn't going to hurt you beyond the first round, since the winners will face #1 and #2 seeds in the second round, and generally bow out at this point.

Advance all of the #1 seeds to the Sweet 16
1 seeds do lose on occasion in the 2nd round, but unless there's some extreme extenuating circumstances, picking a 1 seed to go down before the Sweet 16 is a really bad play. Again, history says that #1 seed is much more likely to go the Final Four than to go down in the 2nd round, so you're setting yourself up for that slow, painful death I talked about earlier. 2 seeds are somewhat more vulnerable in 2nd round games, so if you want to play a hunch with one of them, go ahead. But the reality is that if you even go ahead and take all the #2 seeds to the Sweet 16 as well, you're probably going to go at least 6-2 in 2nd round games involving the 1s and 2s.

Pick a Final Four that consists of 4 teams whose seeds add up to 10 or less
As a more general guideline, I suggest taking 2 #1 seeds to the Final Four, because multiple #1s make the Final Four more often than they don't. Again, this is where the perception that the tournament is unpredictable as a rule just doesn't hold water. I've heard folks suggest that "this might be the year" that the seeds of the teams in the Final Four add up to single digits. The reality is that in 13 of the 23 tournaments since the field expanded to 64 teams, the total of the seeds of the Final Four teams added up to 9 or less, and there were 2 other tournaments where the total was 10, for 15 of 23 tournaments where this rule held true, or 2/3. If you REALLY want to get adventurous, you can go as high as 12, but there have only been 4 times when the number has been higher than that.

Don't pick a team seeded worse than 4th to make the Final Four
Yes, this will happen on occasion, but only on occasion, and you'll never really see it coming, nor will anyone else. A team seeded 5th or worse has made the Final Four 11 teams in 23 years, which accounts for about 12% of all Final Four teams. That 5 seed you like so much is much more likely to get bounced on the first weekend than to make it to the 3rd, so stay away. Really, I'd like to extend to the rule to include 4 seeds as well, because more than 75% of Final Four teams have been seeded 3rd or better, but I'm willing to let you hang yourself picking a 4.

Pick a #1 seed to win the title
Again, the reality that the tournament ends up holding form at the end more often than it doesn't comes back to play. #1 seeds have accounted for more championships (14) than every other seed combined (9) since the tournament expanded to 64 teams.

So, there you have it, the sum of my wisdom regarding picking the tournament. Do with it what you will. I certainly won't guarantee victory if you follow my road map (obviously you still have to pick the right teams within the constraints of my guidelines, and that's not easy), but 9 years out of 10, you'll stay alive late into the game and give yourself a good look at the prize. You'll also keep the spectacular flameouts to a minimum.

For my part, and for the public record, my Final Four is UCLA, Texas, UNC and Georgetown, with UCLA defeating UNC for the championship.