NCAA Experts

A Tournament of Unpredictability

It’s been a wild NCAA basketball tournament thus far. In the first weekend alone, 8 double digits seeds moved on to the 2nd round. 3 of those; #12 Cornell, #11 Washington, and #10 Saint Mary’s; moved on to the Sweet 16. Those don’t even include the biggest upset of them all, when #9 Northern Iowa beat #1 overall seed Kansas in the second round, ruining an unbelievably large amount of brackets country wide. Now the Final Four consists of #5 Michigan State, #5 Butler, #2 West Virginia, and #1 Duke. So raise your hand if you got this Final Four right. That’s what I thought.

The Experts

I woke up this morning and, as usual, put on Sportscenter where I saw Doug Gottlieb making his predictions on who is going to the championship game in Indianapolis and who will eventually be holding the trophy. I sat there and thought to myself “What do I care what Doug Gottlieb predicts, did 

he get the Final Four right? No.” Obviously, there weren’t a whole lot of people who got the last four correct, but for someone who is paid to make correct predictions, why should anyone care what Doug Gottlieb has to say when he picked 1 correct Final Four team, Duke. I don’t mean to pick on Gottlieb, he was just on TV, but why should people like him, the “experts” be on national television making their picks now when they couldn’t get their picks right at the beginning. For the record, NCAA basketball “experts” such as Gottlieb and Andy Katz selected Kansas, Syracuse, Kentucky, and Duke in their Final Four, all four #1 seeds. In the history of the NCAA tournament only once, in 2008, did all four #1 seeds make it the Final Four, and yet, it seems like year after after these “experts” pick the favorite seeds to make it to the semifinals. If these guys study college basketball all year and watch so many games, why should they be considered experts if they can’t even summon up the courage to pick some upsets then they really shouldn’t be making selections on TV. For the record it doesn’t take THAT much courage to not pick at least one #1 seed to not make the semifinals but they still can’t it do it. I just want to point out that I, like many, did not do very well in my bracket, but I don’t call myself a NCAA basketball expert who is paid to just watch NCAA basketball and make correct predictions.

We all know of that girl who knows nothing about basketball, but always fills out a school/office bracket just for fun. She then fills it out, not based on who she thinks will win, but other factors. For example, this year that woman probably got the Final Four right because she picked Michigan State because she wanted Michigan to have a successful team due to their economic struggles, Butler because she loves bulldogs (the nickname for Butler), West Virginia because yellow, the primary color of the Mountaineers, is her favorite color, and Duke because her best friend’s son goes to Duke. We all know this woman and we all despise this woman when she is right, but she seems to do better than these “experts” on ESPN, so shouldn’t they be showing her bracket in front of a national crowd as opposed to “experts” who can’t even get half of the Final Four right? Obviously this is an extreme suggestion, I’m just trying to make a point.

A New Television Special

We see hours of a Sportscenter Special with “bracketologists” such as Gottlieb, Katz, Joe Lunardi, and Dick Vitale making their picks for the NCAA tournament, but what happens when, not “if” but “when”, these guys don’t get their picks right? They piggy back off the people who did by analyzing the remaining games and then making their picks based on who is left. They don’t want to mention how they did on their bracket because they don’t want the embarrassment. So how about this for a Sportscenter Special, we see “bracketologists/experts” showing their brackets after the results and see all those red lines going through their incorrect picks while we listen to them explain why they got those picks wrong. They love to gloat about their picks when they are right, but when they get picks wrong they are nowhere to be found. Let’s see these guys’ faces turn red when they have to justify their incorrect picks in front of a camera.

Time to Rid Them of the Tag

I can accept them calling themselves “analysts” because they do analyze game after game. They can analyze the game they didn’t predict to happen in the Final Four, but the last thing they should be doing is making predictions, because what credibility do they have? I think it’s about time to remove the tag of “expert” or “bracketologist” from the beginning of their name. “We have bracketologist Joe Lunardi with us”? No. You have NCAA analyst Joe Lunardi with you. If he were a bracketologist he would be and expert of brackets and thus be able to properly predict the majority of the NCAA tournament, which really nobody can do. This seems like such a small thing to get annoyed at, but when I watch these “experts” make picks on game that they couldn’t even predict themselves, it gets my blood boiling because it makes them seem like they know what they are talking about when they make their predictions, when they so obviously don’t otherwise they would have predicted it on their bracket.