March Madness kicks off later this week with the brackets having been announced last night. Every year, my parents run a family bracket. A few years ago they even purchased a trophy to go to the winner each year. Of course, transferring the trophy can be a challenge since we have been spread coast to coast. My brother created the first automatically tallying Excel sheet for us to use. Of course, his two sisters (with a computer science degree and minor), had to improve the spreadsheet with conditional formatting, calculating maximum potential scores, and sort options.
So when my daughter was a baby, there was not any question that she would have an entry in the bracket. The question was how to pick her bracket. I had always been curious as to how a bracket picked strictly by seeds would fare, so for three years this was the bracket that she entered. She never won, so I guess it was not that scientific of a method.
Last year, she picked her bracket herself, with a little guidance. For example, we know she tends to pick the last thing you say, so we would give her the higher seeded team last. There were some exceptions to her picks - Michigan, Michigan State, and some "fun-sounding" schools. We did overrule her when she picked a 16 seed to upset a 1 seed. She did as well as with the "expert" picks, but still has not won - of course neither have I in the past 5 or 6 years.
Another idea I thought of is doing a weighted drawing for her bracket. Draw the winner for each game, giving each team the number of entries equal to its opponents rank (ie a 1-16 would yield 16 entries for the 1 seed and 1 entry for the 16 seed). This just seems like a lot of work (unless I did it in a spread sheet with a random number generator.
After picking my bracket and helping with her bracket, the next challenge will be actually watching the games. My husband is the only non-participant in the family pool and he has no interest in watching the games. I think I have finally convinced him that the most important part of the game is the last 5 minutes and that I really don't care about the first 5 minutes of a game. Fortunately with multiple TVs and DVRs, we should be able to come to a peaceful resolution. I also have found that my daughter will have a limited attention span if I tell her she is cheering for one of the teams.
Do you fill out a bracket? Does your child?
