Despite being a basketball fan, I have watched zero college hoops games this year. Covering the NBA takes up too much time. So when searching for a method to make March Madness bracket picks, I was initially at a loss.
NCAA tournament predictions: We flipped a coin to fill out the March Madness bracket
Every team had a 50/50 chance.
Then, I came across an excerpt from this book by neuroscientists Friederike Fabritius and Hans Hagemann. In The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better, and Happier, they write the following:
If you’re torn between two choices of seemingly equal merit, flip a coin. If you’re satisfied or relieved by the decision the coin made for you, then go with it. On the other hand, if the realist of the coin toss leaves you uneasy and even makes you wonder why you used a coin toss to decide such an important decision in the first place, then go with the other choice instead. Your “gut feeling” alerted you to the right decision.
Because I’m a creature of the internet, I read the first two sentences and stopped paying attention. Finally, an objective solution to picking a bracket!
And thus, the Coin Flip Bracket was born. Here were my ground rules:
- I flipped a coin 67 times, going round by round. If heads, the team listed first advanced. If tails, the team listed second advanced.
- To achieve the most neutral results, I flipped an actual coin, not one of those online simulations. Those are for losers.
- I did this on my desk at work. Only the coins that landed on the desk counted. Any that fell off did not. This brought some level of control to the distance I flipped each coin in the air. It also caused me to lose six different coins and piss off my co-workers, but anything for bracket content.
- Most flips were done with a penny. The Elite 8 on were done with a quarter.
Lo and behold:
The good news:
- No double-digit seeds in the Final Four! That seems realistic!
- Wichita State is an unlikely champion, but not that unlikely a champion, all things considering. They have the 15th-best odds to win it all, ahead of a couple teams seeded higher than them. And I know for damn sure that this is the only bracket picking Wichita State to win it all.
- Duke loses in the first round.
The bad news:
- None of the No. 1 or No. 2 seeds make it past the first weekend. That’s ... not gonna happen.
- Yeah, pretty much that.
I probably won’t win your pool, but I know I won’t finish last. (I probably will finish last).
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