Rush The Court

If you’re at all like us here at RTC, filling out your bracket is a anxiety-ridden experience that involves countless hours of research, googling, calculating, checking, flip-flopping, ripping, ruminating, stressing, and ultimately conceding.  From the moment the brackets are released at 6 pm ET on Sunday night until well after midnight on Wednesday/Thursday morning, we’re usually no better off in terms of the key toss-up games and later rounds than we were ten seconds after the matchups were announced. 

You’d think with all the time we put into this sport year-round, we’d have a better initial feel for many of the matchups.  But therein lies the problem.  We have so much information in our heads and at our fingertips that inevitably paralysis by analysis takes hold, and we have to resort to other tried-and-true methods to pick a damn winner.  These methods could include, but are not limited to, playing “home” favorites (Baylor over Duke), picking on league strength (Louisville over Cal), being contrarian (UTEP over Butler), or preferring experienced coaches (Minnesota over Xavier).  Usually, though, late on Wednesday night, mere hours before the early tipoffs of the first round games on Thursday, we go with our gut.  Our gut, of course, meaning we pick up the phone and start calling people.  Because, as we all know, groupthink is always the best sort of think.   

A typical conversation goes something like this:

RTC: You ready to talk about this?
Friend of RTC: (long sigh) Ready as I’m going to be.  Bring it.
RTC: Dude, how are you liking that Florida-BYU game?
Friend of RTC: (even longer sigh) Man, this year is the hardest year we’ve ever had in terms of picking these damn first round games. (said every year) 
RTC: Right, but what do you see happening there?
Friend of RTC: BYU is going to win… Florida is overrated and Fredette is going to light them up.   That is, unless Donovan figures out that he is the only player that can beat them and actually convinces Boynton and Walker to play some defense.  But the last time I saw the Gators play defense, Joakim Noah was waving pompoms around and screaming like a banshee.  So, BYU.  That’s the clear pick there. 
RTC: (scribbling down Florida into the second round) Yeah, yeah, I think that’s right.

And so it goes.  On and on through every toss-up game until we get to the end and absolutely despise the huge steaming wad of a bracket that we’ve created.  We’re talking absolute, unadulterated loathing here.  How on earth can any self-respecting blogger of the sport have Villanova in the Final Four again — that team has been terrible lately.  Or Kentucky and all its NBA-bound stars losing to the likes of plodding Wisconsin in the Sweets — we must be out of our minds.

So maybe the decision that the NCAA made this week to put meaningful games into the Play-In Opening First Round will help people like us, the folks who have trouble making bracket decisions without first seeing every possible word and stat written about the games.  You see, the only way we think that the ubiquitous office and online bracket pools will reasonably continue to work now is if the new deadline is set for Tuesday’s tipoff (presumably at around 7 pm ET).  Of the roughly 90 hours from the unveiling of the bracket to Thursday’s first game start, nearly half of those (42) have been shaved off.  This sea change in available bracket analysis time will require focus and discipline on the part of the uber-analyzers (us) and absolutely no change whatsoever for those who actually win office pools (everyone else).

We’re making a big assumption here, though.  We’re assuming that the standard office pool format will necessarily change to a Tuesday night deadline so as to incorporate those three extra games (two of which may actually impact the later rounds).  It’s worth a quick look to see what the options are as we see them for the pool developers (and keep in mind, we’re not that creative when it comes to this stuff, so offer your suggestions in the comments). 

Option 1 – Office Pools Incorporate First Round Games

We think this is the most likely alternative, which is why we wrote about it above.  Since two of the four first round game winners are reasonable bets to advance to the (now) third round and beyond (as low at-larges), we can’t simply assume a victory by the higher-seeded team in the second round.  After all, #12 seeds historically win roughly a third of their games versus #5 seeds.  This means two things.  First, as noted above, your prep time just got cut in half, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Second, you’re also going to have to spend a few minutes learning about and working through those two #16/#17 games, because for the first time in forever, a Mississippi Valley State-Robert Morris game will actually count against your point total.  Now, about the question of scoring.  There are of course many ways to score these pools, but we have to figure that if the traditional first round (64 teams) counts as one point (or one unit) each, then the new First Four round will have to be a half-point (or half-unit).  It cannot count the same as the Thursday/Friday games, and we don’t expect that any pool will go that route. 

The cost/benefit here is that the entire Tournament matters to office pools once again (all 67 games) and you respect the integrity of the process by making sure that people have an opportunity to choose a low at-large that they think has a chance to go deep.  The downside is that you lose nearly half of your bracket analysis time and you will have to choose two games between teams that nobody knows or cares about.  The shortened time thing will work itself out, as most casual fans have their brackets ready to go by mid-morning Monday anyway; the more knowledgeable folks who populate the bottom of office pools from coast to coast will just have to become more efficient in their selection process.  The one other aspect of this that will have to be dealt with is how to handle the standard 8.5″ by 11″ office pool printout?  This is becoming less and less relevant with online pool management, but people still like to have a hard copy in their hands for cross-offs and highlighting.  We think that the best way to handle this is to simply keep the bracket at the same paper size, but on the appropriate First Four seed lines, a player simply circles the team he’s choosing.  For example:

This is a very easy solution with no major logistical changes needed, and pool developers could enable their games to print out brackets that way so overall page print isn’t too small to read. 

Option 2 – Office Pools Offer a Hybrid Solution

Since hybrid is all the rage now at the NCAA (we expect to see Greg Shaheen driving a new Prius around soon), office pools could follow suit and offer a hybrid solution themselves.  We think this is less likely, but it’s still a possibility.  In the event that they are concerned that people will not have enough time to fill out their pool brackets by the Tuesday evening deadline, then they could utilize a standard Thursday morning deadline for the “real” pool, and perhaps offer bonus points to the folks who want to get theirs in early and try for a competitive edge.  A few additional half-points could potentially be the difference between first and third place at the end.  From a game theory strategy, nobody in their right minds would wait until the Thursday games to fill out their bracket (after all, you’re leaving potential points on the table), but people are not rational animals, so it wouldn’t shock us to see someone try something like this. 

Option 3 – Office Pools Continue to Ignore First Round Games

Undoubtedly some rogue pools who refuse to acknowledge that the NCAA Tournament has expanded to 68 teams will employ this method, and if it turns out that people are not getting their pool entries in by the deadline in Option 1 above, this could be where it ultimately settles.  The full 90-hour window would still be in effect, and the First Four games would be ignored.  The problem with this option is obvious, however — a Monday morning picker could select 30 games before finishing his coffee, but for the two games involving the at-large winners, he would have to rely on faith that a #4-#6 seed will do its job and win its second round game.  We know that is a tenuous proposition, so the only way to ensure his best possible picks are entered is to wait until late Wednesday night or Thursday morning to submit his sheet.  This bestows a distinct competitive advantage on those who wait and remember to finish their brackets, but the most likely scenario is that a) people just pick the higher seed on Monday regardless of who might win the First Four games; or b) people forget to finish their brackets in the small window after the Wednesday night games, meaning there’s a high number of no-shows in those pools.  Neither of these propositions sounds very good to us, but at this point, this is still all theoretical — practice may be somewhat different than hypothesis.

Those are the three main options for office pool games beginning in 2011 as we see them, but the marketplace will ultimately settle this issue and we’re certain that after everyone gets used to whatever changes occur, they’ll be just as popular as they have been over the last two decades.