Win Your 2015 March Madness Office Pool with our Bracket Buster!

Sports Interaction has crunched the numbers so you don’t have to. Ricky Rothstein helps you fill out your office bracket with Sports Interaction’s March Madness Bracket Buster!

The biggest myth in college athletics is that filling a bracket where a 12 seed beats a five is an insider’s play. That’s come about because of recent shock results in those matchups – Harvard beat Cincinnati and North Dakota State beat Oklahoma last year, Cal beat UNLV and Oregon beat OK State the year before. That sticks in people’s memories.

But it’s an observational bias. It sticks in people’s heads because they didn’t expect it to happen. When it goes the other way, like VCU destroying Akron 88-42 in 2013 or Tennessee mugging Long Beach 121-86 in 2007, you just think well, sure. It’s the survival of the fittest, the strong beating the weak. It doesn’t register the way an upset does. You expected it to happen.

That’s where the Sports Interaction Bracket Buster saves the day when it comes to the office pool. Reading across and down, while we admire the 12 seeds for winning 44 games, we can’t deny they’ve lost 76 times since 1985.

What the Bracket Buster tells you is that the Selection Committee generally gets it right. One seeds don’t lose in the First Round. Seven 2 Seeds have lost in the First Round, of which upsets Duke going down to Lehigh of Bethlehem, PA, three years ago was the most spectacular. But for the seven 2 Seeds that lost, 113 did what was expected of them and crunched the opposition by an average margin of just under 18 points.

Not all seeds are created equal. They seem to come in bunches in First Round matchups – 1s dominate 16s. 2s dominate 15s. 3s and 4s come together, then 5, 6 and 7 seeds come in a bunch, with 76-44, 79-41 and 73-47 records against 12s, 11s and 10s, while 8 and 9 Seeds are as even as teams can get in sports.

As well as filling in the office bracket, make sure you bet all the action right here with Sports Interaction. We’ll have lines, totals and moneylines, alternative lines and totals and live betting all through the Tournament!