Experts in College Basketball

Every year we here people telling us how to figure out our brackets. During this time of year, there's nothing really big happening in sports (But Sexy Rexy, what about the WBC? 1) That just recently started and it's not every year. 2) Like I said nothing really BIG happening) so ESPN is forced to talk about March Madness. Every single person and their mother is telling us who to pick. This year, the President weighed in on the issue. And every year people are wrong. NCAA places teams unnecessarily too high and unnecessarily too low, the average fan doesn't know too much about any real mid-major teams, and the single elimination format all are reasons that people fill out their bracket wrong and end up ripping it up after the first three days.

Now ESPN sounds like they can have some real nice analysis here. I heard guys like Digger Phelps explain why teams will win based on certain player match ups and certain defenses teams are prone too/ teams can execute. For example, Digger helped me to know that LSU is a good match up for UNC because of the defense LSU players can execute and the lack of defense by UNC (Sure, UNC beat LSU by 14, but who cares about outcomes, right?). However, no matter what, upsets are bound to happen.

But sometimes, as the analysts loves to do, ESPN makes some mistakes. Here's something my brother pointed out to me:

"Bob Knight thinks part of Memphis' problem is that it played mediocre teams to finish the season. Bob feels that this is the best thing that could have happened to the Tigers."

What? Is it a problem or not? I'm confused. Plus, my favorite thing about the quote is that when Bob Knight THINKS, Memphis is in trouble. But when Bob Knight FEELS, everything's okay for Memphis. The moral according to ESPN? Don't think, just feel. (The above sarcasm is also from my bro)

Now the Final Four is different. You have to win four games to get there and the best teams, the vast majority of the time, tend to make it to the Final Four. In fact, as this site always loves, you can create statistical analysis to determine the Final Four, The Championship Game, and the Winner of it all. A Georgia Tech professor actually created a formula to determine The Final Four and above

Thus formula over the past few years have proven to be extremely accurate. But again, this doesn't help for the four earlier round where many who can create a points edge on the people in your pool

I understand why ESPN has so much coverage dedicated to March Madness. They have to. They're a 24/7 sports news station. They also have to have analysis and predictions. But what I think is important here, is that you really don't listen to those predictions. There's so many conflicting viewpoints between analysts and the fact it you can;t use any logic or reason to say who's gonna win, at least in the first few rounds. So if you're bracket is still competitive and you enjoy college basketball, have fun for the next few weeks or so. But as for me, I'm going to tune out ESPN and focus all of new attention on fantasy baseball drafting. Only one more week baby!