Masterpiece Conspiracy

or Conspiracy No. 5

One of those double title things...I couldn't chose just one song to name this post after. But anyway, I think I'm really on to something. If you have been watching March Madness (the NCAA tournament) you may know that upsets (when a team ranked lower than another wins) are fairly common and unpredictable. So all the people who fill out brackets try to weed out the weak high ranked teams by predicting which of the lower ranked teams will beat them. Another thing you should know is that if you call an upset you get more points in your bracket.

Well I have determined that it's all rigged. Using the stats from the Facebook page that shows what school's students have the best bracket scores, it's clear that it's all completely up to chance! People may be good at guessing who will win, but if you ever noticed, how good they do varies a lot from year to year...because sometimes they get lucky and sometimes they don't. It's relatively random. What's cool about the Facebook stats is that is very clearly shows that the low ranked schools that do well in the tournament also do very well in the overall bracket score ranking, because, of course, they chose their schools to win against the odds, and when this happens, they get a lot more points.

You may be saying, "Well duh, of course that happens!" But I say it makes filling out brackets completely pointless. If you're from a state that has a team in the bracket, you're going to favor that team most likely, as I did with Ohio State. Had Ohio state done well this year, my bracket would have done pretty well, but as for schools with low ranked teams that are doing well, they will do even better. See, it has nothing to do with how smart the school (or the people) are, it has to do with what tournament team is closest to them. Because of all of this, the students as George Mason (ranked 11th which means every upset win is worth even more) in general have very exceptional bracket scores as do the students at LSU and Bradley. All of this doesn't apply to top ranked teams as much however because they don't get as many points for winning (since they're expected to win).

So now that I uncovered the truth to the "skill" of filling out brackets, remember to never bet against someone from a low ranked school in the tournament, or someone that is a fan of those teams because they have a much higher chance of scoring higher than you in reality. Another tip, don't brag about how awesome your bracket is, trust me...you got lucky this year!

Dedicated to a nameless friend who has a very good bracket that he filled out by chosing teams from states he's visited...