Time To Turn In Your Brackets!!

March Madness is upon us. I am willing to bet you or someone you know is filling out a bracket for the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Let’s examine this phenomenon for a moment.There are 68 teams eligible for the tournament. Actually, there are 4 ‘play in’ games that were played yesterday involving 8 teams. That leaves 64 teams in the tournament proper. That means in round one there will be 32 different games… in round two there will be 16 different games… in round three, 8 games…in round four, 4 games…in round five (the ‘Final 4’) there will be 2 games… and of course the final game for the championship. This means you have to pick the winner in 63 games, right? Well, not really. In order for your favorite team to win the championship, you really only have to pick correctly 6 times. It seems incredibly simple… until you start calculating the number of possible combinations. The first 32 are given to you, then it becomes almost impossible to calculate the possibilities. I’m overwhelmed just thinking about it.

We are all filling out brackets at Townsquare Media. The winner gets a free brain scan. It makes sense. The winner obviously has an extraordinary brain.

It reminds me of a quote from Fran Lebowitz… “I’ve done the research and I figure you have the same chance to win the lottery whether you play or not”.

Good day, sports fans.