{"id":111,"date":"2006-03-13T11:41:23","date_gmt":"2006-03-13T11:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/03\/13\/i-got-your-winning-ncaa-bracke\/"},"modified":"2006-03-13T11:41:23","modified_gmt":"2006-03-13T11:41:23","slug":"i-got-your-winning-ncaa-bracke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/03\/13\/i-got-your-winning-ncaa-bracke\/","title":{"rendered":"I Got Your Winning NCAA Bracket Right Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

So RPM thinks he’s all clever, with the Double Entendre Fridays<\/a>— he’s not the only one who can game search engine traffic…<\/p>\n

If you’re one of those philistines who doesn’t like basketball go revel in nostalgia<\/a> (“Cow… yup, yup yup..”), because we’re all about the hoops this morning. It’s that time of year again, when everybody rushes to fll out their brackets for the NCAA Tournament office pools, and we here at Chateau Steelypips are no exception:<\/p>\n

\"i-e51630333b610aa2e778e87be9088df1-sm_bracket.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Of course, the Subject: line aside, I never win these things, because I always pick the teams I root for to go far– I figure, why put my rooting interests in conflict with my financial interests? I never want to find myself in a position where I feel obliged to root for my team to lose– I’d rather fail to win the pool than root against my team.<\/p>\n

This year, though, I have a secret weapon that will propel me to victory, and I’ll reveal it below the fold:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The secret weapon: I’ve watched almost no basketball this year. How does that help? Well, you know how these things are always won by a secretary, or somebody’s girlfriend, or somebody’s girlfriend’s secretary– somebody who doesn’t even watch sports? What with teaching and research and fretting about tenure, I’ve watched so little basketball this year that I might as well be somebody’s girlfriend’s secretary. I’m picking games more or less at random, which means I’m sure to do well.<\/p>\n

I do have a couple of rules of thumb that I stick to when picking games, that I’ll share here (because they never do me any damn good):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Looking for a way to buck the office trend and pick a champion other than Duke? Pick them to lose to a good team from the Big East or Big Ten. Their style ofmplay means that they’re always vulnerable to a team with a strong inside game, and those leagues thrive on that. Sadly, there aren’t any such teams in their part of the bracket.<\/li>\n
  2. Everybody knows this one, but I’ll say it anyway: a #5 always loses to a #12. Of course, the Selection Committee has once again put Syracuse as a #5 seed (a fine prize for winning the Big East), which means I can expect them to go down in flames. Again.<\/li>\n
  3. In the same vein, #9’s beat #8’s, and #10’s beat #7’s, more often than not.<\/li>\n
  4. Lute Olson is my nemesis. When I pick Arizona to go to the Final Four, they lose in the first round, and when I pick them to lose in the first round, they go to the Final Four. They’re a #8 this year, so given my previous point, you should probably pick them to beat Villanova at least.\n
  5. \n<\/ol>\n

    If you’d like to match wits against the ScienceBlogs crew, Dave has the sign-up details<\/a>. I’m in there as “StampCollecting,” in tribute to Ernest Rutherford– in science, there is only physics; bracketology is stamp collecting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So RPM thinks he’s all clever, with the Double Entendre Fridays— he’s not the only one who can game search engine traffic… If you’re one of those philistines who doesn’t like basketball go revel in nostalgia (“Cow… yup, yup yup..”), because we’re all about the hoops this morning. It’s that time of year again, when… Continue reading I Got Your Winning NCAA Bracket Right Here<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basketball","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}