Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Bracketing madness sweeps U. Massachusetts campus
By Chris Hynes
Massachusetts Daily Collegian (U. Massachusetts)
03/15/2007

(U-WIRE) AMHERST, Mass. — For the most part, March indicates the first warm days of spring, the last fresh snow of ski season and the green beer of St. Patrick's Day.

A growing number of students are beginning to realize the true madness of March: filling out a bracket for the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

The tournament, better known as "March Madness," or the "Big Dance," is composed of 65 teams (including the two teams that compete in the play-in game) seeded one through 16 and split into four regionals across the nation. The opportunity to predict the winners of all 63 games piques the interest of thousands — not strictly sports fans.

The days of prospective winners tediously filling out brackets by hand have gone by the wayside. Now popular Web sites like Yahoo, CBS Sportsline, and ESPN allow users to create their own pools, inviting friends and co-workers via e-mail who then click their favorite teams and Cinderella stories all the way to the Final Four if they please.

Yet another floodgate has been opened to expose a larger spectrum of

students with the inclusion of March Madness pools on the college networking site Facebook.com. In addition to the multitude of personal groups, Facebook is also running a site-wide contest where the winning bracket is worth $25,000.

Everyone has their own methods for predicting the future. Some fans fill their entire bracket after only one look through.

"I try to know as much about the field as I can before the tournament then just go and fill out the entire thing in five minutes. Avoid second guessing myself at all," University of Massachusetts student Will Fogerty said.

Others decide to do some background work.

"I go through the first round putting down the obvious games first with no second guessing the No. 1 seeds and the No. 2 seeds, the no-brainers," explained sophomore Mike Porciello. "For the games with more uncertainty I'll usually go online to see how certain teams play. I always make sure to put in some upsets too. It's mainly all about the gut-instincts."

"I try to listen to who other people think are the best, but mine is almost just by chance," Anna Dynarski said. "I don't know much about the tournament but I got pretty far last year, so I tried to remember those teams and pick them again. Every once in a while I'll throw in one of those schools with the weird names, like Oral Roberts."

"I pick my winner of the whole tournament first," said Andrew King. "After that, I'll take a look at ESPN to see what the experts have to say, but I don't really have a whole lot of rhyme or reason."

A lot of students treat March Madness as their only exposure to college basketball all year.

"Intuition is the key for me. I don't really look up any information at all," admitted sophomore novice Andy Reed. "If I recognize any of the team names, or if I randomly heard something about a team that day, I'll usually have them winning a couple of games."

Bracketologists occasionally play favorites as well. Kelvin Chan, a diehard Kentucky Wildcats fan, explained his process.

"I spend some time on ESPN, looking at what other people are picking, but there are always four or five teams I like and always put them above the rest. It's the same couple of teams I root for year after year," said Chan.

All these different strategies are what make the Big Dance one of the greatest sporting events of the year. So for the next few weeks enjoy the games, watch out for the bracket busters and try not to do any serious damage when one of your Final Four teams gets bounced in the first rounds.

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