Millions of fans fill out NCAA Tournament brackets each year, hoping to predict the chaos of March Madness.
The thing about brackets, though, is that there is no such thing as a “perfect” bracket, or at least it’s not as easy as it sounds. If you think you’ve got what it takes, though, be sure to enter our Basketball Mayhem contest for a chance to win $1,000,000.
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Picking a perfect Final 4 can be a lot easier. Even that, according to Virginia Tech Assistant Professor of Sport Media Analytics Matthew Zimmerman, is far from easy.
“On the women’s side, the top seeds tend to rise to the top every year,” Zimmerman said. “On the men’s side, you won’t be able to pick all four final four times. If you do, you can brag about it for the rest of time.”
Zimmerman points to structural changes in college sports, such as name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals and the transfer portal, as reasons underdog teams may struggle more now than in the past.
“Teams that won the smaller conferences, the mid-major conferences, they’re getting worse because they’re losing their best players to those top teams due to NIL and the transfer portal,” Zimmerman said.
As a result, fans filling out brackets may think twice before predicting major upsets.
“It’s always fashionable to pick upsets, but I’m not sure how many 15-over-2 or 14-over-3 or 13-over-4 upsets we’re going to see,” Zimmerman said.
However, this is college basketball in March. Anything can happen.
“Like I said, one of your guys - because he’s human - has a bad game. One of their guys, because he is also human and just gets inspired, has a really, really good game,” Zimmerman said. “You never, ever know how it’s going to happen.”