LinkedUp: Bracketology 101, Don’t Be a Moron and the Oregon 1939 Championship Revisited

Pick Your Own Style for a Bracketbusting NCAA Tournament

Bracketology is becoming almost an art. There so so many different ways to choose your Brackets for March Madness, although the one from the Wall Street Journal is probably the most ingenious I’ve seen.

The Wall Street Journal Vegetable Bracket: Midwest Region

There are of course other ways to choose who moves through to the Final Four, you could use the ‘let my wife choose her favorite mascots’ approach. This year my wife has Bulldogs vs Bulldogs for the NCAA Championship. You could be like Andy Wheeler from CBS Philly and choose several different ways, including my favorite, The Moron. An article from several years ago offers up ‘How to Choose a Bracket Like a Girl’.  AddictedtoQuack created a rating system for picks and here’s a look at what would happen if the teams were to meet on the football field.

However you choose to pick your teams – in some cases the close your eyes and point method may work best, you have to have at least some knowledge of what your doing, or not. It’s up to you.

Fansided’s look at the Midwest Bracket

mgoblog.com

To further assist in your Bracketology  every team always has a shot…at least on paper. Your shot at a perfect bracket…is not very good.

From Fansided, some interesting stats…

There are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 possible brackets (9.2 quintillion)
That’s the number nine follow by eighteen zeros!
That’s ONE MILLION times bigger than 9 TRILLION!

Some examples of just how big this number is:

If everyone on the planet each randomly filled out a bracket, the odds would be over ONE BILLION to 1 against any person having a perfect bracket.

If one bracket per second was filled out, it would take 292 BILLION years to fill out all possible brackets (that’s 20 times longer than the universe has existed).

If all the people on earth filled out one bracket per second, it would take over 43 years to fill out every possible bracket.

If all possible brackets were stacked on top of each other (on standard paper), the pile would reach from the moon and back over 1.1 million times.

All possible brackets (on standard paper) would weigh 90,000 times more than every man, women, and child on earth combined.

Even if a person had a 90% chance of winning each game he picked, his odds would still be 763 to 1 against picking a perfect bracket.

68 vs. 64 teams:
The calculations above assume a 64 team bracket – if expanded to consider 68 teams, multiple the figures by 4.

so if you are thinking of having a perfect bracket….and I know your an optimist, Good Luck.

More Links to Help You Decide

Teams on a roll to end the season and going into their respective Conference Tournaments could be Primed for a Run in the NCAA Tournament.

What Does Vegas Think of All the Madness? (Oregon is 100/1)

Predictors are somewhat silly when it comes to the Tournament. One says the Ducks have a 0.30 percent chance of making the Final Four. 

Here’s one of the coolest breakdown’s I’ve seen – tweeted from @DuckFootball – Each team broken down by the coolest person that went to school there.

Print out your bracket and get set for March Madness, or join us for the CNNSI Bracket Challenge. Sign up and Follow the AutzenZoo Group, the password for entry to the group is AutzenZoo.

If your into Social Media, you can follow the Tourney Teams on Twitter.

Feeling Nostalgic? The U of O Dusted This Off….

and lastly, from the University of Oregon, video from the 1939 NCAA Championship.

 Oregon Ducks This Week:

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