During tournament time, the internet contains no shortage of strategies, advice and tips to help you fill out your bracket. Here at The Athletic, you can find tons of content to help you own your bracket pool. But what if you just want to have fun filling out a bracket and not worry about which teams are streaky from beyond the arc or struggle against a 2-3 zone?
Everyone has a story about someone from one of their work or family pools who doesn’t watch basketball but won because they have a niece who went to Florida during the Joakim Noah years or had Arizona in 1997 because they picked teams based on their favorite vacation spots. It often ends poorly if you go against the crowds, but there’s a reason why they call it March Madness. Weird things do happen.
With that in mind, here are some strategies to employ that will relieve the pressure of picking the best teams and make filling out your bracket a fun, if not silly, experience.
Friends and family bracket
Have a cousin who went to Auburn? Your neighbor went to Duke? Want to rep the schools your kids or parents went to? This is your time to shine.
Any connection to a school counts for something, but stronger connections count for more. If your co-worker two cubicles over went to St. John’s, maybe the Red Storm win a game or two until they go up against your uncle’s alma mater. This could turn into a ranking of the people in your life if you have enough connections to schools in the tournament, which could even become an emotionally revealing exercise.
Emotional hedge
We all have biases that tend to come through in more serious brackets. If you went to Missouri, you’re probably always searching for the next Bucknell or Bradley to knock out Kansas in the first round. Duke and North Carolina fans are not likely to pick their rivals to win the national title, no matter how plausible it may appear. But what if you did the opposite?
Pick all the teams you hate. Michigan fans picking Michigan State and Ohio State to go on runs, Alabama fans backing Auburn, Louisville fans getting behind Kentucky. It’s a classic emotional hedge. If those teams go down in the first round, you dance on the grave of your embarrassed rivals, regardless. If they go all the way, well, at least you have a pile of cash to help overcome your sorrows.
Weather
A weather bracket can be as simple as picking the warmest places (good thing Death Valley doesn’t have a team), or a more nuanced version like picking the best places for skiing (Colorado and Colorado State haven’t made a Sweet 16 since 1969, when weirdly they played each other, so maybe don’t do that too often). If you went for a broader “best weather” bracket, this probably would have given you Florida Gulf Coast over Georgetown in 2013.
While this may be a fun exercise, basketball is not a warm-weather sport. For example, the hotbeds of New York, Indiana or Chicago are not warm-weather areas. This isn’t football where the South tends to dominate.
While North Carolina is sort of in between in terms of climate, the only truly warm-weather men’s national champion of the last 18 years is Baylor in 2021. Florida won a couple of trophies in 2006 and 2007, and there was Arizona in 1997, but most national champions have winter, especially since UCLA hasn’t won a title in 30 years. That said, Arizona was a No. 4 seed, and Florida was a No. 3 seed for its first title, so those classic snowbird states would have been against the grain in pools and likely been profitable.
Color
This one feels like a lot of work if you’re not acutely aware of all the school colors in the first place. Plenty of people remember Saint Peter’s and UMBC for memorable upsets, but can you name their school colors? If you are willing to put the work in to look up all the school colors, this can be fun.
If you want to win, though, just pick blue schools. Of the eight schools that have won at least three men’s national titles, seven (UCLA, Kentucky, North Carolina, UConn, Duke, Kansas, Villanova) have blue as a primary color. The only non-blue school in that group is Indiana, which hasn’t won a national title since 1987 and hasn’t made a Final Four (or Elite Eight) since 2002.
Mascots
This can go a couple of ways. You can choose which mascots you like based on your preference (too bad the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs are in Division III) or choose which ones would win in a fight. If battle royale is your style, we have an entire story dedicated to this topic.
Cat bracket
This one from colleges editor Eric Single is too good not to share: “Pet owners love to project human qualities onto their furry friends, so why not let them fill out a bracket? A few years ago, my wife and I found ourselves without an office pool and stepped into the mind of our tuxedo cat, Ty, to create a third submission against which to measure our picks. We’ve been filling a bracket out for him ever since, and I’m ashamed to admit how many times my entry has lost to his.
“The rules of the Cat Bracket are simple: Cats always win, and dogs always lose. In matchups featuring mascots that are neither cats nor dogs, the side my cat would most likely prefer gets the nod. (Birds, pigs, fish and other less tasty non-dog animals are generally favored; humans, weapons, vehicles and severe weather events, less so.) When two cats clash, it’s dealer’s choice. UConn’s recent dominance has made for some lean years for the Cat Bracket, but this March features enough promising Tigers, Cougars and Wildcats to get Ty back in the winner’s circle.”
Cities visited
Have a favorite city you’ve visited? Or a school you partied or tailgated at where you had the time of your life? Nothing beats picking a bracket based on pure nostalgia and good times. If you take down your bracket based on this method, you can even relive the magic with your winnings! Conversely, you can also choose teams based on the schools you checked out and didn’t enjoy.
Coin flips
This isn’t recommended, but if you want to compete against a bracket that will surely be bad because it doesn’t factor in seeds as favorites, it could ensure you don’t finish in last.
(Photo credit: Kirby Lee / Imagn Images)
