The Fact-Based Way to Win Your March Madness Bracket

Let's pick some teams!

Mar 15, 2024

Howdy! Joey here, back for more Fun Fact Friyay. This time, we’re going to WIN SOME MONEY (or at least your office bracket pool).

Photo by Jacob Rice on Unsplash

A coach with a beard has never won an NCAA basketball championship.

Also true: Chris Beard, the head coach of Ole Miss, has not won a championship.

My favorite time of year is here. Welcome to March Madness. The timing of this email is kind of strange — we won’t find out the actual brackets for a couple of days, but if I wait until next Friday, we’ll already be more than halfway into the first round. And that doesn’t help you win anything!

Have some friends who are playing in a different pool than you are? Share these hot tips with them.

I’m all about using facts to fill out my March Madness bracket. And considering I’ve won four different pools since I started bracketing (bracketeering?) in 2003, I’m basically the greatest ever.

Very few things happen 100% of the time in college basketball, so take note when it occurs. Ditch any bearded fellas as you’re going through your bracket.

Sadly, no online brackets that I know of show a picture of the coach’s face, so you might have to fill your bracket out first and then double-check that your champion isn’t led by a beardo.

Here are some other fun March Madness facts, some of which may help you fill out your bracket, and some of which are just quirky ones I enjoy.

The first men’s March Madness event took place on March 17, 1939. That year, only eight schools made the tournament, with Oregon defeating Ohio State in a rousing 46-33 title game. The women didn’t get a tournament until 1981-82, which feels like a VERY long gap.
A school from Maine or Alaska has never made the NCAA Tournament.
Since the tournament expanded to its “current” format of at least 64 teams in 1985, a school with blue in its official colors has reached the title game in all but one March Madness, an impressive 97.4% of the time. Schools with blue have also won 29 of those 38 tournaments (about 76.3%).
Also since 1985, a school with an animal as its team name has won 28 out of 38 tournaments (73.7%).
Last year was the first time all No. 1 seeds were out by the Elite 8. It was also the first time there was a Final Four with no No. 1, 2, or 3 seeds.
This is a bit of a tongue twister: Since the First Four was implemented in 2011 (bonus games played on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the tournament starts), one of those teams has then won at least one more game in all but one tournament. Two of those First Four teams — VCU in 2011 and UCLA in 2021 — reached the Final Four.
Your odds of a perfect bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, so don’t worry too much if you get a few wrong.