NCAA March Madness will be here before you know it, and that means college basketball season is finally in full swing. No matter if you support the #1 team or the team fighting to make the bracket, March 17th is the day everyone’s eyes will be glued to their televisions for the first rounds. Here are a couple things you need to do in order to prepare.
If you’re going to be following NCAA March Madness, you need to know which teams are involved. The tournament involves 68 Division I teams, and 32 of those spots are given to the conference champion. The other 36 spots are at-large bids given by a selection committee that is broadcasted on national television. This committee also determines the seeding of each team and region they belong to. You can ignore basketball all season, but remember to pay attention when conferences are playing their championships and selection day to give you a better look into what teams will be participating. If nothing else, bookmark the ESPN website so you can keep up with daily game scores.
It’s important to fill out your NCAA March Madness before the games start, or it will not count. You can either print it out, fill it out on ESPN, or enter it into a competition for a cash prize. If your bracket is 100% perfect you can win over $1 million dollars. The odds of that happening are so low that you might as well fill it out to the best of your ability without even thinking about the possibility of winning. There are a lot of ways to decide which teams you think are going to win which games. You could use my sister’s theory, which is pick the team with the best mascot. She’s won our family bracket challenge the last few years so maybe this technique really works. Most people look at records and rankings for their primary decision tool.
If all of your friends watch NCAA March Madness as well, give yourself a much better opportunity and create a pot with them. If each person throws in $5, you could end up with a nice chunk of money if you win. If you have 20 people willing to throw in, that’s a $100 pot for the winner. There are multiple ways to use the scoring system, but the easiest is a simple 1 point for each correct round 1 game, 2 points for each correct round 2 game, and so on and so forth. You could also give a certain amount of points for predicting upsets, but that is mostly up to you and your friends. By keeping score this way you are rewarded for each and every time you chose the correct winner.
Once you’ve prepared according to this guide, the last thing to do is to actually watch the games. There are 67 games played in just 17 days, which calls for some serious planning if you want to watch the majority of them. My suggestion is to pick the games you are most interested in watching. Maybe it’s the supposed best team in college basketball that year or it’s a ridiculous upset you’ve predicted, but either way, you have to narrow it down. Whichever games you don’t watch, definitely check the score so you can keep up with your points and winner predictions.
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