How to win your March Madness office pool!

It’s March Madness time! This is a time where you might need to pretend to be interested about sports in order to talk to your coworkers or impress your friends. If so, you may be wondering how to pick winning teams and collect your office pool. Here are some ways to fill out a bracket:
1. Ask your dad to fill it out for you
2. Do research about the players, how the teams have played this season, blah blah blah.
3. Judge the teams based solely on how they sound, stereotypes, gossip and gut reaction.

Or, you can adopt my special scientific method, which I have outlined below. Get your lucky gambling pen ready, follow the steps for each round, and be sure to give me a cut if you win.

The First 64
Always pick the number one seed in the first round.

Pick any schools that have the same name as your friends and loved ones. I have a brother named George who I like pretty well, so I picked George Mason, Georgetown, and Georgia.

Give religious sounding schools the benefit of having God on their side. If you do this, then St. Joseph’s, St. Mary’s, Temple and Brigham Young all advance.

Pick three schools with funny names. In the first round, I picked Purdue, Gonzaga and Oral Roberts.

Then choose two places that don’t sound very fun to go. Assume that people who go there don’t have much to do and focus intensely on sports to fill their time. I went with South Alabama and Western Kentucky. Conversely, pick two places that you do like to go; I went with Arizona and Oregon.

Then select all the remaining schools that have the color red in their jerseys. When opposing teams both have red in their colors, pick the higher seeded teams. This advances Washington State, Louisville, American, UNLV, USC and Stanford.

To finish off this round in your bracket, pick the school that comes first alphabetically.

Second Round
Pick the number one seed in the second round.

For all other slots, pick the school with more vowels in its name, not counting the word “college” or “university.” One exception to this rule is wherever “Duke” shows up, you are allowed to pick Duke, even if it has less vowels than Arizona.

In the case that some schools have the same number of vowels in their name, pick the one that is higher in the U.S. News and World Report rankings.

Sweet Sixteen
In this round, you can only pick three of the number one seeds. One of them will be upset. Bye bye UCLA.

After selecting the number one seeds, eliminate any remaining schools that have two names, i.e., South Alabama. After the two-names are gone, pick the schools with the shorter names.

Crazy Eights
To get to the Final Four, your school has to have a lot of fans, so pick the school from the more populous state.

Final Four
At this point, it’s finally time to take a look at the school’s mascot. Identify all the remaining school’s mascots. Personally, I have these left:
North Carolina (Ram) vs Kansas (Jayhawk)
Stanford (Cardinal) vs Duke (Blue Devil)

Now, we’re not trying to pick which one is the coolest mascot, although that method would probably work. Instead, think about which mascot would be more delicious to eat. As a poultry fan, I think I would probably enjoy eating jayhawks and cardinals more than I would enjoy eating rams or blue devils. Immediately eliminate the mascot you are more likely to want to eat, because this is a sign of weakness.

The Big Game
At this point, I am left with North Carolina vs. Duke. This is every North Carolinian’s favorite match-up, unless that North Carolinian was raised by a UVA fan, as I was. I’m going with North Carolina cause I’ve been hearing good things.