A Noble Experiment…

Basketball, College Basketball

Posted by SK, March 19, 2008 - 2:27 pm

Ah, NCAA tournament time.  The smell of photocopiers churning out the bracket of 65 is in the air, as people from all ages, all walks of life, and all levels of knowledge put their hard-earned money on the line in the hopes of winning their office pool.  And some tool at ESPN is probably actually getting a bonus for making up the term “Bracketology”.

Your humble correspondent, however, has never won an NCAA pool.  But as we always try to serve the public interest here at DeepSlant, I have proposed an experiment.  Now, the last thing that was called a noble experiment was Prohibition.  Fortunately, this experiment will not involve the ban of any type of mind-altering substance.  For our brackets this year, I have decided to try and determine what level of skill and/or knowledge of college hoops it takes to win an NCAA pool.

The rules are simple.  Points awarded for every game picked correctly: 1 point for each game picked correctly in the first round, 2 points for the second, 4 points for the Sweet Sixteen round, 8 points for the Elite Eight round, 16 points for the Final Four, and 32 points for the championship game.  Whichever bracket has the most points at the end of the tournament wins.

The Players:

• SK - Completely Random.  My bracket was picked completely at random by Yahoo! Which is cool that they have an option to do that.  What’s uncool is I’ve got the 12th seeded University of Western Kentucky winning it all.  Um, go Hilltoppers!
•  Hasan H - The Front-Runner.  H-Dub decided to pick the higher seed in every game, with the Final Four and Championship round based on Vegas odds.  The funny thing is, he’s the furthest thing from a bandwagon jumper that I know.
• Obiora - The Expert.  Obes knows more college hoops than the rest of the entire DeepSlant staff combined.  However, he is a huge Pitt and Big East homer.  We’ll see if that affects his picks in any way.
• Russell A - The Casual Fan.  Russ starts paying attention to college hoops around mid-March, right before Selection Sunday, because he needs something to do between the Super Bowl and the NFL Draft.
• Little SK - The Homer.  Little SK is also a casual fan, but the difference is he is a huge Texas homer.  I fact, I think he’s picked the Longhorns to win every single year since his freshman year at Texas.
• Mrs. Little SK and Lika - The Pink Perspective.  Because this is an experiment, in order to be statistically viable, we need more than one female picking.  Actually, I just made that up, but it sure sounded good.  I’ll be profiling the thought processes behind these two brackets later on in the tournament.

I’ll be posting updated standings after every weekend of the tournament, so stay tuned to see how this experiment plays out.  Good luck to everyone!

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