The NCAA basketball tournament brackets are out.  After last year’s tournament was cancelled, I’m glad to see March Madness come back this year.  The fact that the entire tournament will be taking place in Indiana this year makes it even more interesting for me, even though I won’t be actually attending any of the games.  I’ve already attended the biggest stage anyway; I took the picture above at the 2015 NCAA men’s basketball championship game between Duke and Wisconsin in Indianapolis.

With this year’s tournament field now complete, it’s once again that time of year to fill out your own bracket and see how good you are at predicting the outcomes of college basketball games.  Perhaps you might enter some sort of contest this week and compare your results with the results of other people’s brackets for bragging rights.  Sometimes even those who don’t follow sports participate in the fun by filling out a bracket with complete guesses, and end up doing better than some of the “experts.”  If you’re planning to fill out a bracket this year and looking for some tips, you’ve come to the right place.

Every year at this time, my friend Brian and I collaborate on our own bracket.  Except, our predictions are based entirely on the ferocity of the team’s mascots.  For example, who would win between a Wildcat and a Cougar?  Never mind which basketball team is actually favored to win.  Don’t worry about whether you are predicting a 16 seed over a 1.  After all, upsets happen all the time.  Just compare the schools’ nicknames.

This year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament bracket is shown above, as well as another version of the bracket with the team’s nicknames.  The official bracket from CBS Sports (minus the nicknames) can be also found here, and a list of all the colleges and their nicknames (at least according to Wikipedia) can be found here. Fill free to fill out your own bracket based on which mascot you think would win in a fight.  Here are some tips we have come up with over the years:

1. If the two mascots are the same, or of equal strength, the better seed advances. We have sometimes had to apply this logic, particularly with Wildcats, due to a traditional abundance of Wildcats in the tournament.
2. Always define the school’s nickname to evaluate a matchup. For example, although the Stanford Cardinal’s mascot is someone dressed as a tree, the school’s nickname Cardinal does not refer to a tree.  Instead, it refers to the color cardinal, not the bird known as the cardinal, or the Catholic clergy. Knowing the proper definition of the school’s nickname affects some of the matchups. If you don’t know what a school’s nickname means, you have to look it up.
3. Generally, dogs beat cats, and cats beat birds.  This logic cannot be taken to an extreme, as a bulldog still doesn’t beat a tiger, but I use this as a good rule of thumb.
4. If the school’s nickname is a person, consider whether they would have a weapon.  For example, an Aztec would be armed and therefore could defeat a bear, while an Aggie (a student of agriculture) would not.
5. Blue Devils tend to go far in this tournament.  Obviously, God defeats the devil (and apparently so does COVID, having just ended Duke’s season this past week), but no school is actually blasphemous enough to have the nickname God, or dumb enough to have the nickname COVID. Blue Devils generally only lose if matched up against teams such as the Friars, Crusaders, or Saints (due to these teams having God on their side). Without the Blue Devils in it this year, we will have to look elsewhere to find the favorite in this tournament.
6. Theological debates may arise in other matchups involving Friars, Crusaders, or Saints.  Although God would certainly intervene to allow them to defeat the devil, does God also intervene in other matchups (say, against bears) or let nature run its course, resulting in them becoming bear food? Certainly, God could intervene, but divine intervention in these matchups can’t be assumed.
7. Although not living beings, weather events and other natural disasters (Hurricanes, Cyclones, etc.) tend to do well because while you can die in one of these events, it’s difficult to defeat them.
8. Colors (such as Cardinal, Orange, etc.) are probably the weakest mascots ever. If they can’t do anything to you, they can’t beat you. Inanimate objects such as Buckeyes (either the nut or the ball of peanut butter and chocolate) or Shockers (shocks of wheat) don’t fare much better.
9. If the Fighting Irish or the Gaels play on St. Patrick’s Day, they automatically win.  If they play on March 18^th, they automatically lose, since they will be too hung over to fight.  That scenario won’t come up this year, but sometimes it does happen.
10. Most matchups are considered to be one-on-one. For example, Badgers vs. Wolverines means one Badger vs. one Wolverine). However, a Wolfpack is an entire pack of wolves. Since five players are on the court, we consider the Wolfpack to be five wolves, not one. Sadly, this is another line of logic that we don’t get to apply this year.
11. If having a hard time deciding between the Gators and another team, remember, all basketball games are played on land instead of water. If in doubt, the Gators lose, due to home-court advantage (game played on land).
12. In a very specific matchup that has only occurred once, Terrapins beat Jackrabbits because the tortoise beats the hare.

Now, before you go filling out your bracket on this basis, I should add the disclaimer that these brackets have traditionally not fared very well in real life.  Although, you never know – this could be the year for this logic to actually play out, like it did for Mandy Jensen in the classic Saturday Night Life skit below from the 2007 episode hosted by Peyton Manning:

Perhaps you’re still not convinced that filling out your bracket based on the ferocity of the mascot is the way to go.  If that’s you, perhaps you’d rather go the George Costanza route and do exactly the opposite.  Fill out your bracket based on which mascot is the weakest and see if that’s any more realistic.  And yes, we done this as well.  We usually end up completing two brackets – a “hefty bracket” and a “wimpy bracket.”

Personally, I fill out four brackets, as follows:

1. Hefty bracket – Which school’s mascot would win in a fight?
2. Wimpy bracket – The team with the weaker mascot advances to the next round.
3. Sheet of Integrity – My real bracket. A term coined by ESPN’s Mike Greenberg, the “Sheet of Integrity” refers to the one bracket that you want to actually count.  This is to prevent people who fill out ten brackets and pick a 15 seed to beat a 2 in one of them from bragging about their prediction if it actually happens.  You can’t brag about that unless you picked it on your Sheet of Integrity!
4. All Favorites – I always fill out a bracket where I pick the better seed to win in every matchup.  Much like the hefty bracket and the wimpy bracket, you won’t win any contests by doing it this way, but you’d be surprised at how well you do.  Better than many people’s Sheets of Integrity.

With all that said, I will have some brackets to fill out this week.  As a creative exercise sometime this week, see if you can fill out your own bracket based on which mascots you think would win. After filling out your bracket(s), sit back, enjoy some basketball, and see how well you predict the games this year.  In case you’re wondering, I like the Hoosiers to win it all this year, despite the obvious handicap of not even making the tournament.  Good luck to everyone in your March Madness bracket contests!

Update – March 20, 2021: Our hefty bracket and wimpy brackets this year are shown below. We have the Drexel Dragons winning the whole thing, as a dragon would defeat any other mascot in their path in this year’s tournament. Never mind the fact that they are a 16 seed. Never mind the fact that they have already lost in the first round of the tournament. The Dragons have what it takes to burn up the rest of the competition this year. After advancing past the Liberty Flames in the Sweet 16 (since the dragons create the flames they are supposedly matched up against), they burn the rest of the competition, taking down the USC Trojans in the championship. Obviously, this isn’t going to actually happen, and we would like to see our pick be a little more realistic, but congratulations to the Dragons for winning our bracket this year based on the best mascot.

Also, a backhanded congratulations to the Syracuse Orange for winning our other bracket based on the worst mascots. This probably won’t happen in real life either, but you can always have fun with the possibilities.