Hey All!

I thought I would share my project that I am working on again this year. I have decided to make 48 brackets all with different selection methods and track how well they do on average every year. My thought process is that there are 3 types of bracket challenge participants: the "I don't know shit so lets use some arbitrary selection system," the "I follow every game so I'm filling mine out based on advanced metrics or ranking systems," and the "I think this team will win because I occasionally watch basketball." The 48 brackets are divided into 3 categories that try to replicate how a bracket would be filled out by these people. Our 3 categories are:

Random

• Wheel Generator

Done by generating a bracket from https://wheeldecide.com/wheels/sports/college-basketball-wheel-madness/.

• Weighted Coin Flip

Winner of coin flip advances. 1,2 seeds must lose 3 in row to lose in first round. 10 seed difference requires 2 losses in a row for higher seed to lose. Heads is top team, tails is bottom team

• Coin Flip

Winner of flip advances. Heads is top team, tails is bottom team.

• ESPN Autofill

Weighted by seed using ESPN Autofill Bracket feature.

• Chalk

No upsets at all.

• Colors

This is just my personal preference for colors. I tend to like greens, purples, and blues in that order, so this bracket doesn’t normally do that well….

• Mascot Fight Club

Simply which mascot would win in a fight?

• Lottery

Give each team a number 1-16 in their region. Randomly generate a number. Each time a unique number is called, advance that team as far as they can go. (e.g. First number pulled is champion, second loses to the first when they meet, etc.) randomly assign 1-4 for the final four teams and do the same.

• Academic Rankings

Use https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities to advance the higher ranking teams in their matchup. The Ivy League champion always kills this bracket...

• Football Teams

If this were a 2017-2018 football game, who would win?

• Alphabetical Order

A wins over B….

• Coach Wins

All time head coach record according to Wikipedia by total wins

• Longest Names

Tiebreaker goes to higher seed. Omit the words “University” and “of”. Extend all abbreviations.

• Best Records

Best winning percentage. Tiebreaker goes to number of wins or higher seed.

• Proximity to Furman

How close the team is to my apartment measured in straight-line kilometers using http://www.distancebetweencities.us/index.php

• Proximity to Venue

How close team is to the stadium where game is played using same rules and site as above

Statistical and Ranking Systems

Higher ranked/rated team moves on. Find statistics/ratings systems online. Value bracket is ESPN People's Bracket minus 538's percent chance to win.

Intuition Brackets

Pick whatever I think will happen trying to vary scenarios to have many different champions and final four combinations

I have created a live view of the brackets on Google Sheets. I'll try to post round by round update posts to see how everything is going!