Hello, I’m the one-eyed king of my NCAA pool
I’d like to thank the Florida Gators for beating the Villanova Wildcats yesterday. This clinched my victory in my family March Madness pool. [Uh… aren’t there some more games to be played?–ed.] Yes, but because everyone (including myself) had number one seeds like UConn, Duke, or Villanova winning the Final Four games, no one can ...
I'd like to thank the Florida Gators for beating the Villanova Wildcats yesterday. This clinched my victory in my family March Madness pool. [Uh... aren't there some more games to be played?--ed.] Yes, but because everyone (including myself) had number one seeds like UConn, Duke, or Villanova winning the Final Four games, no one can earn any more points. I didn't do great in my predictions, but as the saying goes, in a land of blind men, the one-eyed man is king. I do take comfort from the fact that according to ESPN.com, there are very few two-eyed people out there right now: The Final Four looks nothing like the users of ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge predicted. More than 1.5 million people participated and of the more than 3 million entries submitted only four -- that's right, four -- picked a Final Four including Florida, George Mason, LSU and UCLA before the tournament started. Over 66 percent of entries had none of the Final Four teams correct and better than 29 percent had exactly two teams correct. As you probably guessed, George Mason is the team that busted the most brackets. The Patriots were picked in 1,853 entries to make the Final Four, with only 677 putting them in the championship game and only 284 predicting George Mason winning the national championship. UCLA, on the other hand, got the most support -- more than 24 percent of all entries have the Bruins advancing to Indianapolis. This result also confirms that I know next to nothing about either health care reform or the quadrennial defense review. UPDATE: It turns out that one of those four correct predictions was an accident -- the person confused George Mason with George Washington.
I’d like to thank the Florida Gators for beating the Villanova Wildcats yesterday. This clinched my victory in my family March Madness pool. [Uh… aren’t there some more games to be played?–ed.] Yes, but because everyone (including myself) had number one seeds like UConn, Duke, or Villanova winning the Final Four games, no one can earn any more points. I didn’t do great in my predictions, but as the saying goes, in a land of blind men, the one-eyed man is king. I do take comfort from the fact that according to ESPN.com, there are very few two-eyed people out there right now:
The Final Four looks nothing like the users of ESPN.com’s Tournament Challenge predicted. More than 1.5 million people participated and of the more than 3 million entries submitted only four — that’s right, four — picked a Final Four including Florida, George Mason, LSU and UCLA before the tournament started. Over 66 percent of entries had none of the Final Four teams correct and better than 29 percent had exactly two teams correct. As you probably guessed, George Mason is the team that busted the most brackets. The Patriots were picked in 1,853 entries to make the Final Four, with only 677 putting them in the championship game and only 284 predicting George Mason winning the national championship. UCLA, on the other hand, got the most support — more than 24 percent of all entries have the Bruins advancing to Indianapolis.
This result also confirms that I know next to nothing about either health care reform or the quadrennial defense review. UPDATE: It turns out that one of those four correct predictions was an accident — the person confused George Mason with George Washington.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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