As I type this right now, we are eight games into this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament, and so far, all eight of the teams I called to win in my bracket have picked up their ever-important wins. For those of you who are interested, here are a few links to who I’ve picked through each round of the tournament, and a look at my final four: Midwest | East | South | West | Final Four

For those of you that are still a bit confused as to what is going on, every year I make my predictions on the NCAA March Madness Tournament based on a few factors:

1. Did I attend the school?
2. Have they been playing well in the regular season?
3. What conference do they play in?
4. Are they one of my regular schools I support? (Kentucky, UConn, Maryland)
5. Do I know anyone that went to the school?
6. What is their ranking?

Clearly, as you can tell from this list of factors, it isn’t surprising that I picked my former college, Georgetown, to win the tournament; luckily, this year, they’re actually one of the best teams in the NCAA so it isn’t such a long shot. For those of you who struggled to complete your brackets this year, I’d suggest coming up with a similar list of criteria and just go with it. For example, Matt Thomas’ list of criteria is pretty intriguing, and has led to a pretty exciting bracket.

As the tournament began, my brother made a very astute observation: the NHL and the NBA would be much more exciting if they followed a similar playoff strategy as NCAA Basketball. A short regular season would rank all the teams in the league going into the final playoffs, and each team in the league would have a chance to play in a do-or-die bracketed tournament to decide the league champion. Logistically, it may be hard to set up at first, and I’m sure the players’ union in each league would have a public outcry, but in the end, both those leagues would benefit greatly from the hype that comes from a bracketed tournament.

Surfing the web with brackets in mind, I found a book on Amazon called The Enlightened Bracketologist, which turns the art of having an opinion into a sport. Pretty interesting idea, if you ask me. In response to the book, Slate came out with some interesting interactive brackets to help you decide the best ad slogan of all time (Just do it), the greatest film deaths (Bambi’s mom shot by hunters), the most poignant ‘where were you when’ moment (9/11 attacks), and the most ridiculous marital argument (When are we going to get married?). Go and try them out and have some fun with them. And then go watch some NCAA basketball.