Happy Thursday! It’s officially the best time of the year to be a school alumni as March Madness kicks off today. We cover that and more in SportsBall edition #29 ⬇️

🏀🏁 Tournament breakdown
🪄👰 Re-appearing partners
🎨⛹️ Classical Art

LEARNING MODULE 💡 

First things that come to mind when we think of March:

🎉 Riley’s birthday
☘️ St. Paddy’s Day
🏀 March Madness

Every year, 64 NCAA Division I basketball teams for both men and women compete in the single-elimination tournament to crown a single winner. It goes by March Madness.

This week, we break down the two weeks of basketball that account for 70% of the NCAA’s yearly revenue.

How it Works ⚙️

4 regions host the beginning rounds of the tournament; East, West, South, and Midwest.

Each region has 16 teams ranked 1-16 based on their performance throughout the season. In the first round, teams play the opposite-seeded team 🔄;

#1 plays #16
#2 plays #15
#3 plays #13
… etc.

The winner of each region moves on to the Final Four and from there, a champion 🏆 emerges.

The Schedule 📅

Did someone say couchwork? 🛋️ There are 63 games in each tournament starting today through the championship on April 8th.

For the first round today and tomorrow, that’s 16 games per day with an overlap of at least 4 games at once. Sounds like a cheeky 🤒 Slack status incoming.

The Bracket 📝

The fun part of March Madness is filling out a bracket. It’s easy, right?

Think again…

60-100 million people are expected to fill out brackets this year, up from an estimated 56 million last year. Yet no one has ever created a perfect bracket.

Why? 🤔

Mathematically, it’s virtually impossible. If you flip a coin to decide each game, the odds of guessing the bracket perfectly are 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

For context, there are roughly 10 quintillion insects on earth. So every time you see an ant in the garden, remember that ant 🐜 could be your perfect bracket.

Bracket Strategy ♟️

Everyone has a method for picking teams to go far in the tournament.

We’re no exception.

For the official SportsBall 2024 March Madness bracket, we selected winners purely based on the school’s distance from Zach Bryan tour locations. 🤠 

Our proprietary method is not only numerically sound, but will likely outperform the properly researched bracket I pay money for…

There are still a few hours to fill out your picks at a few different places. NCAA, Yahoo Sports, and ESPN all make it easy to pick your team no matter your strategy. You can pick winners based on:

🥊 Which school mascot would win in a fight
🔠 Alphabetical order of schools
🤓 Lowest incoming freshman average GPA

There’s even someone who chose winners based on school proximity to the closest Arbys. We’d still take the Zach Bryan bracket over Arby’s, but to each niche fan their own!

QUICK BITES FROM THIS PAST WEEK 💨

⚾️👰 

The traditionally private and extremely well-paid Shohei Ohtani hard-launched his marriage in a really sweet Instagram post last week.

It signifies a 2X increase in “mysterious re-appearances of wives of athletes or royals the public assumed didn't exist” this week.

⛳️ 📈 

Although viewership numbers would disagree, The Players Championship was a great watch over the weekend.

Scottie Scheffler won, continuing his reign of dominance in the golf world, 🌎 and here’s a great viz from @datagolf on how much better he is than the rest of the players right now.

🏀🎨 

The best follow on X right now is @ArtButSports. Based on memory alone, the account can match sports pictures to classical art pieces with shocking accuracy. 🎯

It’s the perfect sports → not sports crossovers we love here.

📱🎰 

Gaming might be finally crossing the line.

We aren’t sure which we like less, LinkedIn announcing they’re bringing games to the job platform (?) or the NBA introducing gambling on every screen of their mobile app.

Can a guy not just get hired or watch a basketball game like a normal human anymore?

Thanks for reading and enjoy the games this weekend!

— Riley and Claire

Keywords: March Madness, NCAA Division I basketball, Tournament breakdown, Final Four, Bracket, Bracket strategy, Sports analytics, Shohei Ohtani, Scottie Scheffler, The Players Championship, Datagolf, ArtButSports, Classical art, Gaming, NBA, LinkedIn, Sports entertainment, March events, School alumni, St. Patrick's Day, Quick bites, Instagram post, Viewership numbers, Traditional sports crossover