2008 Woodie Awards
Bracketing madness sweeps UM campus
Chris Hynes, Collegian Staff
Issue date: 3/15/07 Section: News
For the most part, March indicates the first warm days of spring, the last fresh snow of ski season and the green beer of St. Patrick's Day.
A growing number of students are beginning to realize the true madness of March: filling out a bracket for the NCAA men's basketball tournament.
The tournament, better known as "March Madness," or the "Big Dance," is composed of 65 teams (including the two teams that compete in the play-in game) seeded one through 16 and split into four regionals across the nation. The opportunity to predict the winners of all 63 games piques the interest of thousands - not strictly sports fans.
The days of prospective winners tediously filling out brackets by hand have gone by the wayside. Now popular Web sites like Yahoo, CBS Sportsline, and ESPN allow users to create their own pools, inviting friends and co-workers via e-mail who then click their favorite teams and Cinderella stories all the way to the Final Four if they please.
Yet another floodgate has been opened to expose a larger spectrum of
students with the inclusion of March Madness pools on the college networking site Facebook.com. In addition to the multitude of personal groups, Facebook is also running a site-wide contest where the winning bracket is worth $25,000.
Everyone has their own methods for predicting the future. Some fans fill their entire bracket after only one look through.
"I try to know as much about the field as I can before the tournament then just go and fill out the entire thing in five minutes. Avoid second guessing myself at all," UMass student Will Fogerty said.
Others decide to do some background work.
"I go through the first round putting down the obvious games first with no second guessing the No. 1 seeds and the No. 2 seeds, the no-brainers," explained sophomore Mike Porciello. "For the games with more uncertainty I'll usually go online to see how certain teams play. I always make sure to put in some upsets too. It's mainly all about the gut-instincts."
A growing number of students are beginning to realize the true madness of March: filling out a bracket for the NCAA men's basketball tournament.
The tournament, better known as "March Madness," or the "Big Dance," is composed of 65 teams (including the two teams that compete in the play-in game) seeded one through 16 and split into four regionals across the nation. The opportunity to predict the winners of all 63 games piques the interest of thousands - not strictly sports fans.
The days of prospective winners tediously filling out brackets by hand have gone by the wayside. Now popular Web sites like Yahoo, CBS Sportsline, and ESPN allow users to create their own pools, inviting friends and co-workers via e-mail who then click their favorite teams and Cinderella stories all the way to the Final Four if they please.
Yet another floodgate has been opened to expose a larger spectrum of
students with the inclusion of March Madness pools on the college networking site Facebook.com. In addition to the multitude of personal groups, Facebook is also running a site-wide contest where the winning bracket is worth $25,000.
Everyone has their own methods for predicting the future. Some fans fill their entire bracket after only one look through.
"I try to know as much about the field as I can before the tournament then just go and fill out the entire thing in five minutes. Avoid second guessing myself at all," UMass student Will Fogerty said.
Others decide to do some background work.
"I go through the first round putting down the obvious games first with no second guessing the No. 1 seeds and the No. 2 seeds, the no-brainers," explained sophomore Mike Porciello. "For the games with more uncertainty I'll usually go online to see how certain teams play. I always make sure to put in some upsets too. It's mainly all about the gut-instincts."
Be the first to comment on this story