Sometimes, I even go against my own team.  Sounds like a fair weather fan right?  Not really, this is all about the numbers, and you have to be a little impartial when your doing this kind of thing.  If you find it hard to be impartial, then it’s probably better to just pick games that your team is not playing in.  So, whether your into professional basketball, don’t be shy about picking your favorite and putting a little money down.  It doesn’t take a lot to make it fun, so dive right in.

The NCAA tournament, is a bracket based tournament, and that means teams need to be seed on each side of the bracket.  There are approximately 1200 or so college teams that are eligible to compete under NCAA rules.  There are actually three divisions within the March madness tourney, and they each play their own tournament.  Division I, II and III schools participate in their individual division tournament.  Not everybody realizes that there are that many tournaments going on, since most of the televised games come from the division I schools where most of the premier players are.  Because there are so many teams in each division (over 300 in division I), it would be inconceivable for them to play a regular season with the top teams advancing to the NCAA championships.

That’s not to say, that their regular season play doesn’t count for something though.  There is a panel of adjudicators, made up of various leaders in the NCAA basketball community that decide which teams play.  Teams that win their individual conference championships (approximately 50% of the teams required), and the rest are pick by the adjudicators.  They take into account, the record of the individual teams during the regular season play.  As well, they have to take into account who they beat, who they lost to, road wins/losses,  and RPI scoring.  The results are announced on television, during “Selection Sunday”.

Once that’s done, then the real fun begins.  All the speculation leading up to the tournament is now replaced with every expert and expert-wanna-be making the March madness picks. It’s a lot of fun at this point, since it’s really just a numbers game.  Many of these teams haven’t even played each other during the year, so the lineup is decided on who looks better on paper.  And we all know, that looking good on paper is not always the same when it comes to performing under the lights on court.