Bracketology

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Bracketology is a slang term for predicting the field of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, named as such because it is commonly used to fill in tournament brackets for the postseason. It incorporates some method of predicting what the NCAA Selection Committee will use as its Ratings Percentage Index in order to determine at-large (non-conference winning) teams to complete the field of 65 teams, and, to seed the field by ranking all teams from first through sixty-fifth. ESPN's Joe Lunardi is acknowledged as the inventor of bracketology. [1]

1 Process
2 Motivations
3 Trivia
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Process

Using the NCAA basketball tournament selection process, the RPI, and the seeding and balancing process, a "bracketologist" places teams in the tournament in the various regions (named by the host city of the regional semifinals and finals). Some bracketologists go as far as to placing teams in which "pods" they will play in the first and second rounds. Generally, the lists also show the last four teams in and the first four teams out. These brackets change daily as conference tournaments continue and teams automatically qualify for the tournament.

A bracketologist's credibility is judged on how many teams he predicts correctly being in the tournament and the average difference between the bracketologist's projected seed and the actual seed assigned by the NCAA Selection Committee. The difference between projected matchups and the differences between the "pods" selected in the first and second rounds are less important.

A similar process now exists for the National Invitation Tournament called "NIT-ology". This was made possible by officials of NIT (now owned by the NCAA) publishing their selection and seeding process. In the past, NIT selections were made not just on athletic merit, but also on fan base and potential audience, because of the NIT operator's agreement with ESPN.

[edit] Motivations

There are many motivations for a bracketologist. For Lunardi, he was already gathering statistics and information in his role as Sports Information Director for St. Joseph's University and editor of the Blue Ribbon Yearbook on men's college basketball, so it was not much more effort to predict the brackets. Others are motivated at perceived flaws in other bracketologist's predictions, such as putting too much (or too little) emphasis in the RPI, favoring lesser or major conferences, or failing to consider factors such as performance in the last few games.

[edit] Trivia

ESPN's Selection Sunday special is called Bracketology 101. Since 2004, Staples, a chain of office supply stores, has been the presenting sponsor of the program.