11/8/2023 0 Comments March madness bracketsAfter testing multiple complicated calculations and weights, I settled on one simple formula: The way I decided to reward upset pickers was to give an extra point based on the difference of the teams’ seeding and the tournament round when the game is being played. An upset would happen when the lower-seeded team wins the matchup. Ultimately, these ranks will serve as a relative measure of strength between teams (for more advanced ways of doing this, check out the ELO methodology used by FiveThirtyEight). One simple way of identifying upsets is comparing how the teams were seeded by the NCAA selection committee. Which is why, since an upset like that can cost one dearly, predicting those correctly should be more highly rewarded. That doomed any chances he had to make a splash in those tournaments by the standard scoring, even though he correctly guessed some unlikely outcomes. Similarly, in 2018 the bracket was busted open by the first-ever 1-16 upset of Virginia against UMBC in a year when his bet was on Virginia reaching the final against Michigan State (who lost in the second round). In 2010, President Obama trusted top-seeded teams like Kansas, Kansas State, Villanova, and Kentucky to reach the Final Four. What if we introduced that madness into Obama’s brackets?įirst, let me make the case for it. One of the most interesting features of the NCAA tournament are the upsets. To be sure, while Obama’s predictions in 2009 were impressive, that was also a year of high-seeded teams going deep into the tournament. But 2012, a year where the former president only got half the Final Four correct, is a close runner-up as the weight of games is more balanced. In fact, Obama’s 2009 bracket was so good that it wins in almost every point system that has been used. The more of the last four you pick in a system like the standard, which values games played later in the tournament more, the more success you will have, even with a mediocre performance in early rounds. Obama peaked at 123 points in his very first year as president, in 2009, propelled by an impressive 28 out of 32 points in the second round and predicting North Carolina’s national title.Īnd that is the reason why methodologies matter. 2011, with 43, holds the worst point-per-game rate among the ten brackets. 2012 is only his third best bracket score. Correct picks, however, do not necessarily result in high bracket scores. In 2012, the former commander-in-chief had 44 correct picks, meaning he chose winners correctly just about two-thirds of the time. He had an all-time low of 35 correct picks, well below the Obama average of 39.4. Obama’s second term was pretty much a slump and last year, well, did not look good at all. In the last decade, three years were clearly the best ones for the former President: 20 in his first term, and 2017, the first year after the end of his presidency. We will call this one the standard system. This methodology is used across the board, including by major outlets such as Fox Sports and CBS - ESPN also uses the same proportions but scaled to ten (10 through 320). Let’s assume, for now, that we are using the most common scoring system out there: 1-2-4-8-16-32, as in 1 point per correct pick in the first round and 32 for correctly predicting the national champion. So before we start analyzing all 630 of Obama’s picks, laying out those assumptions is important. But how good? Is Obama good at predicting upsets? What is his favorite school? And when did he fill out his best bracket ever?Īnswering bracketology questions is always a bit tricky because methodology matters. Word is that he was pretty good with his picks. And it’s a tradition that he’s kept up since leaving the White House. In fact, for every year while in office, he filled-and made public-his brackets for the NCAA Tournament. Former President Barack Obama is a big sports fan.
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