Collegiate Times

Is anybody else tired of "Bracketology"? Watching the fluctuations between "Last Four In" and "Last Four Out" on the ESPN ticker has almost made me tired of March Madness before the brackets have even announced.

After beating Wake Forest, Joe Lunardi pegged Virginia Tech as a Tournament team. Then, while the Hokies were idle between that game and the Clemson game, they were categorized as one of the "Last Four Out."

They hadn't even stepped on the court yet, and they were leapfrogged. The maddening thing was that if Tech had beaten Clemson, it would've been right back in the Tournament, so why couldn't Lunardi have waited until that game? "Bracketology" is fine when it comes down to predicting the top-tier seeds, but it's fickle when it comes down to predicting who will squeeze in and who will be left out.

ESPN, with its 24-hour news cycle to fill, is trying to make an exact science out of an event that has become the grand spectacle it is because of its inherent unpredictability. That's why it's called Madness - there is simply no conceivable way to accurately forecast what will happen.

In college football, there are only 119 Division I-A teams, and with the bowl system, conference tie-ins and small number of games, it's easier to make predictions about teams' postseason bowl destinations - last season being the exception, of course.

In college basketball, there are 326 Division 1 teams all vying for one tournament, and the outcome of a game between mid-majors on the West Coast can affect the NCAA Tournament hopes of a middle-of-the-road team from a power conference on the East Coast.

Bubble teams such as Miami and Ohio State can tell you that firsthand. After San Diego beat Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference tournament championship, that became one less at-large bid available, and Joe Lunardi's "Bracketology" was automatically altered.

"Bracketology" is nothing more than an ESPN opinion creation that will drive you to madness if you try to keep up with it all. It's just the educated guess of a couple analysts that really doesn't mean a whole heckuva lot.

With the frequency of games and one-and-done nature of conference tournaments, projections can radically change in a matter of hours, and you will see that this weekend. It already happened, as Syracuse saw its hopes dashed in a matter of 40 minutes.

When the NCAA Tournament Selection committee goes into hiding to select the 65 team field, they have a method to the madness that leads them to make certain selections over others.

Their decisions will be hotly debated in the immediate aftermath, but none of that really matters when teams take the floor. Because no matter which teams they pick, there will always be plenty of drama.

A couple years ago, the tournament committee selected George Mason over conference rival Hofstra, despite the fact that Hofstra had beaten the Patriots twice. Critics lamented, but George Mason quieted those doubters with one of the greatest NCAA Tournament runs of all-time. The point is, you or any ESPN analyst just don't know exactly what will happen when it comes to March Madness.

That's the beauty of the whole thing. So next time I turn on ESPN, I'm going to ignore the ticker at the bottom and just wait and see how the conference tournaments play out. After the dust has settled, then form a final absolute opinion on the candidates. Because March Madness is and should be caused by the players on the court, not the talking heads on TV.