I write about March Madness every year because I love college basketball – which – comes as a surprise to most people. I think most have trouble imagining me as anything but an intellectual. I think they envision me as the smart nerd kid who failed gym class.

It’s quite the opposite. I always got A’s in gym class and reserved the rest of the grading alphabet for my other classes. And while I’m not such a great basketball player, mostly because of the dribbling and running, I am a serious spectator. I mean, it’s not like Football where you catch the ball and just run… that I do well. But with Basketball, you have to run and bounce a ball at the same time. Now that’s talent to me…

So now having explained how sporty I am, I’m diverting into an intellectual discussion of March Madness… Welcome to my world…

Every year, I fill out three brackets; One is based strictly on the numbers… One is based strictly on my biases and personal preferences and one uses critical analysis. Before I tell you which one won this year, let me define each process in a bit more detail…

When I fill out the bracket based strictly on the numbers, I give it no thought other than the rankings and the team’s record for the season. The only exception is if I get to two teams with the same ranking or same record. Then I have to decide which becomes the priority. And its usually the record. A team’s season will tell you everything you want to know about their ability to stay in the game.

This process is a challenge to the accuracy of the NCAA… They decide the rankings and as such, if the team doesn’t live up to their ranking, blame the NCAA. This is how I put them to the test…

The bracket based on my biases and personal preferences is actually my favorite to complete because I can be judgmental and petty and baseless without harming anyone. This is my opportunity to reject all things Texas and Florida for no good reason.

I also reject The University of Michigan because I grew up in Ohio and The University of Cincinnati because I grew up in Ohio… I hate the color blue, so, If one school has blue in their school colors and the other has red, red is my color. The red school wins. This is liberating. This. Is. Fun…

My last option is to be the intellectual everyone expects me to be. I look at everything. The rankings… their records… the games I’ve seen them play and how I think they can stand up in a tournament. All of it. This is not fun… This is work. This is a combination of hypothesis and analysis. Like I work for SportsCenter of something…

So which process works the best? Well, as you can imaging, they’ve all had their day. I will admit, they years when I can be completely biased and win a bracket challenge is just so gratifying. It means trying to turn this into science is a joke.

Likewise, the years when bracket-by-the-numbers wins is all buzz-kill for obvious reasons. AND, it makes for such a boring, predictable tournament. Luckily, this doesn’t happen so often because there’s always one little engine that could who’s a bracket buster…

This years’ winner? Critical Analysis. It got me a national champion. By the time I got to the Final Four, it’s the only bracket that had any picks left. In fact, it’s been critical analysis for the past two years. Second place went to my biases and rounding out last place was by-the-numbers. Shout out to the NCAA…

So congratulations to Villanova… 2018 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champion and we’ll see you next year with the exact same process…