Bracketology
Bracketology is a slang term for predicting the field of the
NCAA Basketball Tournament, named as such because it is commonly used to fill in
tournament brackets for the postseason. It incorporates some method of predicting what the
NCAA Selection Committee will use as its
Ratings Percentage Index in order to determine at-large (non-conference winning) teams to complete the field of 65 teams, and, to seed the field by ranking all teams from first through sixty-fifth.
ESPN's
Joe Lunardi claims to be the inventor of bracketology. [
1]
Using the
NCAA basketball tournament selection process, the RPI, and the seeding and balancing process, a "bracketologist" places teams in the tournament in the various regions (named by the host city of the regional semifinals and finals). Some bracketologists go as far as to placing teams in which "pods" they will play in the first and second rounds. Generally, the lists also show the last four teams in and the first four teams out. These brackets change daily as conference tournaments continue and teams automatically qualify for the tournament.
A bracketologist's credibility is judged on how many teams he predicts correctly being in the tournament and the average difference between the bracketologist's projected seed and the actual seed assigned by the NCAA Selection Committee. The difference between projected matchups and the differences between the "pods" selected in the first and second rounds are less important.
A similar process now exists for the
National Invitation Tournament called "NIT-ology". This was made possible by officials of NIT (now owned by the NCAA) publishing their selection and seeding process. In the past, NIT selections were made not just on athletic merit, but also on fan base and potential audience, because of the NIT operator's agreement with ESPN.
There are many motivations for a bracketologist. For Lunardi, he was already gathering statistics and information in his role as Sports Information Director for
St. Joseph's University and editor of the
Blue Ribbon Yearbook on men's college basketball, so it was not much more effort to predict the brackets. Others are motivated at perceived flaws in other bracketologist's predictions, such as putting too much (or too little) emphasis in the RPI, favoring lesser or major conferences, or failing to consider factors such as performance in the last few games.
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College basketball*
NCAA Selection Committee*
Bracket (tournament)*
ESPN Bracketology*
CollegeRPI.com*
Bracketography.com*
Bracketology by DraftExpress.com*
Bracket Racket projections*
Bracketology 101*
Bracketology article in New York Times*
NIT-ology
