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The NCAA March
Madness tournament has over 30 million
people competing in office pools and betting
according to a recent NCAA study and FBI
reports have suggested that the total amount
bet on the brackets comes to nearly $2.5
billion dollars every year with less than 4%
of that total coming in Vegas sportsbooks.
With pools everywhere from corporate
offices to schools, March Madness is a big
deal and one of the most fun betting
activities of the entire year for many
people in the world.
Best
March Madness Betting Sportsbook
-BookMaker.com
UCLA holds the
record for most college basketball
championships with 11, followed by Kentucky
with 7, Indiana with 5, and in-state rivals
Duke and North Carolina coming in at 3 while
Austin Carr stills hold the single game
tournament scoring record with 61 points
back in 1970 in a game between Notre Dame
and Ohio.
BracketScience.com
has some interesting tournament statistics
up based on their PASE ratings which are,
according to the website, “calculated by
comparing a team's actual number of wins to
the number it should've notched based on its
seed position for each appearance. The
positive or negative difference is then
divided by the number of appearances to
arrive at an average number of games the
team either over-performs or under-performs
per tournament.”
Auburn has exceeded
expectations the most with a 12-6 record
with an average seed of 7.6 while Rhode
Island, Florida, and George Mason are not
far behind at sneaking up on people and
coming away with improbable wins.
The Nebraska Cornhuskers rank dead
last with a 0-6 record despite their average
seed being 7.8.
They also have a
PASE number for coaches which are
“calculated by comparing a coach's actual
number of wins to the number he should've
notched based on his seed position for each
appearance.”
John Beilein
(currently of Michigan) leads the coaches
category with a 6-4 record despite averaging
a 10-seed in his tournament games with
former Michigan coach (and current San Diego
State coach) Steve Fisher not far behind
with a 20-8 record despite an average seed
of 6.22. If these two
coaches have teams in the tournament, keep
an eye out for upsets because they’ve
proven in the past they are capable of
lifting their teams. Oliver
Purnell of Clemson ranks last in the
coaches’ rankings with a 0-5 record
despite an average seed of 9.
Those thinking they
are going to enter a March Madness betting
pool and come away with a perfect bracket
really need to rethink their theory; the
odds of anyone coming away with a perfect
bracket in this format are
9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1 (if you ever
want to repeat that to someone, just say
they are “over 9 quintillion to 1”).
You’d have better odds of winning
the lottery jackpot and that number is
actually what you’d get if you multiplied
9 billion by another billion! Some
like to fill out multiple brackets in hopes
of getting a perfect March Madness bracket
but the reality of the situation is that we
may never see a perfect bracket in our
lifetimes. Here are some
tips to help you realize your dreams of the
nearly-impossible perfect bracket sheet when
March rolls around.
A #16 seed has never
defeated a #1 seed but the #15 has had some
success over #2 with the latest victory
coming in 2001 when Hampton managed to upend
the highly-favored Iowa State Cyclones by a
final score of 58-57. The
#13 and #14 seeded teams have only done
moderately better and it’s not until you
get to the #12 seed that you see where most
upsets happen. The #12
has beaten the #5 team in this tournament 11
of 24 times over the last 6 years.
#10 and #11 don’t have any
significant statistics but the #9 has a
winning record against the #8 teams.
Although upsets do
happen, a team seeded #4 or higher has won
the tournament every single time over the
last 18 years so be careful over-advancing
your big surprise teams. If
history tells us anything, it’s that they
eventually meet their maker and don’t go
all the way. Go with an
established team with a higher seed as your
eventual winner.
The legality of
office pools is not entirely clear but since
the amount of people participating in them
is so massive, it’s rare to see anyone
punished for throwing in $5 or $10 with some
of your buddies at work. With
all the games going on at once, just make
sure you manage to get some work done.
Not doing so may result in an
infraction that is much more likely to get
you punished by your boss at work |
