Sweet 16 Loser Challenge Welcome

I’m a fan of the bracket pool. I really am. But the Poolmaster, in addition to referring to himself in the 3rd person, also refrains from running March Madness bracket pools. While fun, there are 2 things about brackets that aren’t perfect:

1. Most of the excitement is in the first weekend, but bracket pools are decided by picking Kansas, Duke, or UNC in the finals. What if there was a pool for just the first weekend?

2. All this picking of winning teams gets a bit repetitive. What if there was a pool for losing teams?

You know that gritty 13 seed that wins their first game with a buzzer beater, and is up by 8 at halftime of their second round game, only to go on and lose by 5 as their star player with a 3.9 GPA in biomedical engineering fouls out and cries on the bench? This pool is for those guys!

Welcome to the first annual Sweet 16 Loser Challenge!

Your goal is to pick teams that will not make it to the sweet 16. The better the team, the greater their value if you pick them. (#16 seeds are only worth 1 point, but #1 seeds are worth 16 points, for example). Pick as many loser teams as you like, but be warned: if any of your loser teams actually make it to the Sweet 16, you are eliminated!

The player left standing with the most points is the winner. US$5 or CAN$6 entry fee, multiple entries are encouraged. Tiebreaker question is to pick the team that will allow the most points over the first weekend of the tournament.

What will be your strategy? Go whole hog with about 40 teams and hope the brackets go chalk the first 2 days? Pick your spots with some #5 and #6 seeds and stay away from the curse of the #12 seed? Or go with the Price is Right $1 bid strategy and take only Radford and hope everyone else flames out? Perhaps you plunk down $15 and do all 3? Perhaps I'm thinking about this too much?

Picks of course are due before The Ball Is Tipped 12:25 eastern on Thursday.

Good luck!

Poolmaster

As usual, updates will be provided at the Poolmaster Blog Website.

(Note: this is meant as a supplement to your regular diet of bracket pools, not a replacement. None of the products in this infomercial contain sufficient nourishment for all of March.)