Average Person's Guide to Giving You The Best Chance To Win Your NCAA Tournament Pool But You Probably Won't Anyway

I haven't watched most of the college basketball season. Chances are that if you're reading this post, you probably haven't, either. But, you're reading it because you know me and you're going to fill out a NCAA bracket, so why not read what one more person has to say? While the experts will give you their choices and analyze these current teams, I'll give you my expert opinion, which is likely just as good as theirs with how these tournaments turn out every year. So, here it is, my “Average Person's Guide to Giving You The Best Chance To Win Your NCAA Tournament Pool But You Probably Won't Anyway.”

 Hi ladies, I'm a bracketologist!

1. Pick teams with a history.

You know the teams that have won the championship before, and over the past decade, it's been a lot of familiar names multiple times: Duke, Connecticut (but, this year, oops!), Florida, Michigan State, North Carolina. As long as these teams are having good years, they should be locks to guarantee you at least early round points (not so much North Carolina, but definitely Duke. There's no way Duke loses in the first round again, is there?!)

2. Pick the coaches

I have no idea why, but there are just some coaches who know how to coach in the NCAA Tournament regardless of how good their team is. Some of them are the same people who coach the teams above: Kryzyzewski (Duke), Izzo (Michigan State), Donovan (Florida), and all of the previous teams are alluring picks in this tournament. There are even the new coaches like Shaka Smart (VCU) and Brad Stevens (Butler) who know how to make the wins happen.

3. Don't fall for the “trap” teams (whoever they are).

Every year, the tournament has them. They are teams that have either been seeded better than they should be or they made a run at their conference tournament and that was the only thing that you watched this season, so now you're salivating over them. Biggest traps this year: Gonzaga (#1 seed with a history of disappointment), Miami (I'm selling on their season/ACC Championship win), Michigan (#4 seed doesn't even show how much they seem to have fallen apart). Remember, I don't really know anything, and you may have your own trap teams in mind, but they're out there.

4. There are going to be upsets, silly.

This is a guarantee. Some weirdo team will end up in the Sweet 16. Your guess is as good as mine, and I didn't feel good about any of the weirdo teams to actually pick this one, so I'm guaranteed one wrong in the sweet 16. Oregon and California are appealing, but they're not weird enough. Belmont and South Dakota State sound nice, but really? I'm going to ride Belmont to the Sweet 16? Why can't Akron be playing any other team but VCU? I love my MAC teams to the Sweet 16!

5. Do not put too much money into your pool.

The NCAA Tournament is the most fun that you can have in sports, and the worst fun that you can have if you actually wish to gamble.

So, based off these five rules I just made up now, I'm putting $5 into a pool and picking the Duke Blue Devils to win it all (a team I've strangely never picked before)!

Final Four: Duke, Ohio State, Florida, Indiana

Biggest Upsets: (12) California, (12) Oregon

Middles to watch for: (5) VCU, (6) Butler, (6) Arizona, (9) Villanova, (9) Wichita State

I'm really looking forward to seeing how wrong I am, and I'm not sure if I even followed my own rules. Enjoy the tournament! 

The Sway of the Conference Tournaments

The NCAA men's basketball tournament bracket is complete. But, it couldn't have been completed without another year of conference tournaments, a bizarre but exciting approach to college basketball that can sway people's opinions incorrectly going into the NCAA Tournament.

The conference tournaments are a little odd. While many people criticize the BCS for its structure and money grab from the major conferences, the basketball tournaments hold some similarities. The major difference is that it breeds excitement. These conference tournaments provide an appetizer to the “Big Dance” with dramatic games in major venues from Madison Square Garden to the United Center which counters football's desperate need for a bigger playoff system that gives mid-major schools a better opportunity at the national crown.

But, just as the conference tournaments breed excitement, it cannot be denied that they are major money makers for both the NCAA and the respective conferences. Additionally, they provide an added, unnecessary emphasis on the NCAA Tournament that skewers our perception of teams.

The average person who will put their money in on the NCAA Tournament probably hasn't watched much college basketball throughout the year. They kick in their viewing once the conference tournaments hit. With not much to go by, they rely on the teams that produced well in the conference tournaments as a gauge to their potential success in the NCAA Tournament.

In the same light, the NCAA adds emphasis to the conference tournaments. Whoever wins the tournament receives an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, which, while adding excitement, toys with the whole point of looking at a team's merit based off an entire season and puts into jeopardy every bubble team on the rare occasion that a lowly team runs their way through the weekend and their conference championship. In general, it's a bit bizarre to have a season conference champion and a tournament conference champion.

Furthermore, the NCAA Tournament's committee that decides the bracket puts far too much emphasis on the outcomes of the tournament in deciding seeding. This seeding ultimately has an impact on our own perception of the teams when filling out our brackets as well as once again swaying away from the importance of a team's regular season. An example is Ohio State, who likely could have been as low as a #6 seed or as high as the #2 seed that they did receive depending upon how they fared in the Big Ten Tournament.

I'm going to go ahead and grab this #2 seed.

To look further into the impact of the conference tournaments on the outcome of the NCAA Tournament, let us look at the winners of the NCAA Tournament since 2000 and the winner of their conference tournament that year:

2000: Michigan State – Michigan State

2001: Duke – Duke

2002: Maryland – Duke

2003: Syracuse – Pittsburgh

2004: Connecticut – Connecticut

2005: North Carolina – Duke

2006: Florida – Florida

2007: Florida – Florida

2008: Kansas – Kansas

2009: North Carolina – Duke

2010: Duke – Duke

2011: Connecticut – Connecticut

2012: Kentucky – Vanderbilt

8 of the past 13 NCAA champions won their conference tournaments. However, in most cases, they weren't surprises. Other than Kemba Walker leading Connecticut on their wild run in 2011, and perhaps Florida in 2006, these were stalwart teams from traditionally excellent programs. Nevertheless, from a numbers standpoint, the majority of champions were winners of their conference tournament, so momentum may play a factor.

However, take a look at last year's conference tournament champions and their outcomes in the NCAA Tournament:

ACC: Florida State - 2^nd round

Big Ten: Michigan State – Sweet 16

SEC: Vanderbilt - 2^nd round

Big 12: Missouri - 1^st round

Big East: Louisville – Final Four

The main point is that the conference tournaments normally have at least one winner that is a real trap team when it comes to their actual production in the NCAA Tournament. Florida State seemed like the clear possibility last year (and that was the case), but it turned out Vanderbilt was as well as Missouri being the biggest miscue (even for me as I had them winning the tournament in my bracket).

The conference tournaments are a fun experience, but they shouldn't allow a person betting on the bracket to get too invested in them. Momentum always plays a role, but it's more difficult to find in the forecasting of the most enigmatic sport to determine, college basketball. It's best to rely on the conference champions that proved throughout the season that they were winners rather than the ones who managed to bump themselves up and are now making all of us think they are better than they truly are because of seeding.

Flacco vs. Boldin

The Baltimore Ravens sent Anquan Boldin to the San Francisco 49ers for a 6th round draft pick. It was yet another cost-cutting move by the Super Bowl champions who are looking to stay under the cap while also managing the expensive deal they handed out to quarterback Joe Flacco.

The deal for Flacco was the type of deal that I said the Ravens shouldn't make. The market for that type of contract may have been there for Flacco, but it was better suited for a reckless team to make such an offer and the Ravens to reap the benefits of potential draft picks from those teams. Instead, the Ravens (already mired in cap issues) dug themselves into a deeper hole.

That hole got much more confusing when the Ravens shipped off Boldin. First, if the market for Flacco was so high, how could the market for Boldin possibly be so low as a 6th round draft pick? Sure, we are dealing with two different positions here and the impact of a quarterback trumps that of a wide receiver. But, I would argue that without Boldin, Joe Flacco doesn't have the type of postseason that propelled him to having the biggest contract in NFL history. Here are the duo's postseason stats:

Joe Flacco - 57.9% completion, 1,140 yds, 11 TD, 0 INT
Anquan Boldin - 22 catches, 380 yds, 4 TD

Flacco was questioned throughout the year as being an elite quarterback. He technically proved his critics wrong with a superior postseason. Boldin had four touchdowns for the whole season then stepped it up on the way to a Super Bowl title.

The biggest question is this: would the Ravens be better off with an unknown quarterback, their receiving corps intact, two first round draft picks from the team that signed Flacco, and more to work with when it comes to their cap space issues or Flacco and cap issues? We'll never truly know the answer other than to see how Joe Flacco and the 2013-14 Ravens play.

 Boldin owns his now teammate.

What further surprises me is that there were not any other takers offering something better than a 6th round pick? As a Browns fan, I would have gladly offered a 4th round pick for Boldin's services or even put conditional implications on a lower round pick. It makes sense that the Ravens wouldn't trade Boldin to a division rival, but no other team (not even the Dolphins who spent lavishly on Mike Wallace) would be interested in a veteran receiver fresh off being a leader on the Super Bowl winner? Just as bizarre as it would be for the Ravens to send Boldin to the Browns, it's odd that they send him to their Super Bowl opponents in the 49ers.

Fans should respect the Ravens front office. Their track record and history are evident. General manager Ozzie Newsome also acknowledged that they were not going to repeat the type of experience that they had with the salary cap following their last Super Bowl win. Nevertheless, it's a curious choice and with both them and the Steelers making cost-cutting moves, the AFC North got a lot more interesting.