Master The Madness: Boost Your Performance in 10-Minutes for Reigning Champions!
Welcome, budding bracketologists! By taking this step, you’ve decided to join the roughly 80 million people who enter a March Madness pool every year. As a first-timer, we imagine this week is both exciting and a bit daunting, which is why we’ve put together these Bracketology 101 course materials.
Included is everything you need to know for a successful first run at picking the tournament, and some information to use if you need to convince people around the office you’ve secretly been an expert this whole time. Simple glossary This may be your first bracket, but it’s not your first exposure to #BracketTalk. If you’ve heard the language but are unsure of what it all means, here’s a quick cheat-sheet of common terms we will use in the rest of the guide: Chalk: Refers to the higher- or better-seeded team in each matchup Upset: A lower-seeded team beating a higher-seeded one (generally only refers to seeding, not perceived talent of the teams) Bracket-buster: The biggest kind of upset, in which the higher-seeded team that lost was commonly picked to go much further in the tournament.
The format March Madness is a 64-team*, single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion. Teams make the tournament in one of two ways: They win their conference tournament at the end of the season (this accounts for 31 slots). These are referred to as automatic qualifiers.
They are selected by a 12-person committee based on performance during the season. They are referred to as at-large bids. It’s helpful — but not necessary — to know which teams are which.
A team may briefly get hot in its conference tournament and win it, but would not have been good enough to make the tournament otherwise. You don’t need to research this yourself; people will talk about it nonstop if it happens. *A note on the whole “64 teams” thing: You will consistently see 68 teams mentioned instead of 64.
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