Grayson Loftis, Jordan Moore, Maalik Murphy, Jaylen Stinson, and Justin Pickett joined head coach Manny Diaz yesterday at the ACC Kickoff doing interviews, photo shoots, and tv appearances with the ACC Network. Duke Report was able to get a few interviews and videos of the players and coach Diaz. You can find links to three of the Youtube videos for Duke Report below. You can find a few more ACC Kickoff videos at the Duke Report Youtube channel link below. We are now just over five weeks away from the season opener at home in Wallace Wade Stadium against Elon on Friday August 30th of Labor Day weekend. Duke has a stacked schedule this season that first year Duke Football head coach Manny Diaz and the players will have to navigate through. I have a Top 6 Duke Football games I am looking forward to and why that you can check out in the video below or just scroll down the blog to see the article with the video as well. This year's football schedule for Duke features three Friday night games - two at home and one away - including opening the season with two back to back Friday games Throw in games at home against North Carolina, Florida State, SMU, and Virginia Tech as well as away games at Georgia Tech, Miami, and NC State and like stated above, this is a tough schedule to navigate. Check back here at Blue Devils Blog as well as Twitter @DukeReport and the Duke Report YouTube channel. More content will be coming soon, including my season record prediction and the weekly (love 'em or hate 'em) bowl projections.
See you all soon.
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The ACC Kickoff is less than 2 weeks away. I will be heading down to Charlotte for the event and will be there for all of Duke Football’s coverage on Wednesday.
Check back here at the blog or on Twitter @DukeReport as well as the YouTube channel @Skeelow22 for more content from the ACC Kickoff. You might even see a way too early preseason bowl projection from Brian of Duke Football Talk and myself of Duke Report. With that said we are just over 6 weeks away from the start of the college football season for Duke. Duke Football will kick off its season on Friday night August 30th of Labor Day weekend with a home game in Wallace Wade Stadium vs Elon. Duke once again has a tough schedule that includes home games against North Carolina, Florida State, SMU, and Virginia Tech as well as road games at Georgia Tech, Miami and NC State. Below is Duke Report’s Top 6 Duke Football games (in order of when they are played) we are looking forward to this season. #1 - Duke vs North Carolina - 9/28/24 at Wallace Wade Stadium Looking at the schedule, Duke Football has the ‘potential’ to be 4 - 0 heading into the rivalry game with North Carolina and the battle for the Victory Bell. Drake Maye is gone to the NFL and Unc (just like Duke) will have a new look. As of this writing, we don’t know the time for this game but I am hoping for another night game. North Carolina has a 5 game winning streak dating back to October 26, 2019. Duke Football fans are more than ready to finally bring the Victory Bell back home to Durham. The last two games in this series were very close games with Duke only losing by 3 points in Durham in 2022 and losing after 2 overtimes in Chapel Hill in 2023. I expect another epic matchup in this rivalry. #2 - Duke vs Florida State - 10/18/24 at Wallace Wade Stadium Duke will play Florida State at home in a Friday night game with a 7 PM kickoff that will be on ESPN 2. You already know this game easily makes the top 6. Florida State has the potential to be a college football playoff contender. If you follow college football, you definitely saw all the drama when an undefeated FSU got left out of the playoff last year. With the expansion of the playoff to 12 teams now, I expect FSU to be one of the top ACC contenders. A Friday night game in October against FSU who is looking to make the playoff will be a battle in Wallace Wade Stadium. FSU will be coming off a home game against Clemson with an away game at Miami after the away Duke game. Could FSU get caught up looking ahead...? Let’s look back real quick to Labor Day last season and we all remember Duke pulling off the upset or beat down over Clemson... well this game could have potential to be an upset, but Duke Football will have to be firing on all cylinders when FSU comes to Durham for that to be a possibility. Side note - this is a big game that’s also landing on a Friday night. Here’s to hoping Duke University gets creative and say cancels classes this day or at minimum have an early release which will help with the parking and help fans to be able to get to the game on time and also have the option to tailgate before for what will be a epic matchup against FSU. #3 - Duke vs SMU - 10/26/24 at Wallace Wade Stadium With the All Coast Conference (I mean Atlantic Coast Conference) recent expansion we now have Cal, Stanford, and SMU in the ACC. SMU will travel to Durham to play Duke for the last Saturday in October. I can easily see SMU fans traveling well for this game. SMU will be on a mission to show they belong in the Atlantic Coast Conference. I believe this will be a tough matchup for Duke but has the potential be a quality win as well. #4 - Duke at Miami - 11/2/24 at Hard Rock Stadium Duke will travel to Coral Gables, Florida in early November for a matchup with Miami. This has the potential to be a tough road game for Duke. This game will also spark the interest of both fan bases as Duke Football head coach Manny Diaz will be in the middle of his first year coaching Duke Football while heading down South to play Miami where he was the head coach from 2019 - 2021. As of this writing, I think Miami (along with FSU and Clemson) are top contenders to win the ACC this upcoming season. With that said, I would love to see Duke pull off the upset on the road or at the very least play a very competitive game. #5 - Duke at NC State - 11/9/24 at Carter-Finley Stadium Look college football aside… I’d go to this game as a sports fan just for the tailgating. I’ve been to a few tailgates for Carolina Hurricanes games and I’d imagine it’s just as good for Wolfpack games. One would think NC State has not forgotten about the blow out loss to Duke (24 - 3) last season at Wallace Wade Stadium. NC State will be looking to get revenge on Duke Football with a home game at Carter-Finley Stadium the second weekend in November. Side note - In a conference that now expands from sea to shining sea… it is nice for Duke Football to have a road game that is very close for fans in Durham and the surrounding areas to travel to in Raleigh. Day game or night game… this is a road game local Duke fans around the areas of Durham can easily travel to and still get back home saving money on hotels and travel. #6 - Duke vs Virginia Tech - 11/23/24 at Wallace Wade Stadium I believe this will be a very tough game for Duke. I also think Duke can pull off this win at home. Virginia Tech is one of my surprise teams this coming season and I think coach Brent Pry will have the Hokies ready. I could easily see Virginia Tech with 8 possibly 9 wins heading into this game with Duke and hungry to secure a top tier bowl. I know the times are not set for this game yet, but I would love for it to be a night game as this game has the potential to be a good one. Be sure to check back here at Blue Devils Blog and Twitter @DukeReport as well as the Youtube Channel @Skeelow22 in the near future for our season record prediction as well as our first bowl projection of the season. For many of you that are reading this… I know it’s been a brutally hot summer but rest assured college football and fall nights will be here soon. Let's rewind back to June 4, 2021. It was a Friday morning and I was inside Cameron Indoor Stadium waiting on the press conference that would officially announce Jon Scheyer as the next head coach of Duke Men's Basketball. Media members and family had gathered in Cameron for what was a monumental time in Duke Basketball. The previous day Coach K had just finished up his retirement press conference. On that Friday Jon Scheyer was introduced as the next head coach and would start after Coach K finished up the 2021 -2022 season which would be K's 42nd and final season as the head coach of Duke basketball. Around this time and the upcoming months (or years) 2 main discussion points were talked about among the media and fans. 1- Why did Mike Krzyzewskiville give pretty much a year notice that the upcoming season would be his last and what impact will this have? 2 - Is a young Jon Scheyer the right coach to take over the reigns of Duke basketball? Well it is almost 3 years later since that Friday morning in June 2021 that the Scheyer press conference was held and these questions have been and continue to be answered... Look... Coach K is a mastermind of the game of basketball and of life. He knew what he was doing by giving a year notice to Duke basketball, to Duke, and to the fans of the game by announcing his retirement early. This gave Jon Scheyer a year head start to get ready to become the head coach. Scheyer was able to build connections with upcoming recruits as well as be on the sidelines of Coach K's last season knowing that he was next in line. And to think, there were media and fans that thought K was announcing early just for a victory lap. Um... no... You don't become the GOAT coach in college basketball by thinking about yourself. You become the GOAT by being able to constantly adapt to new eras of the game. Coach K was able to adapt his coaching style to make the Final 4 in FIVE different decades! He won 5 national championships with different types of teams over his 42 years at Duke that ranged from seniors and freshman to all-americans and role players. So yeah K had a solid plan in place for the future of Duke basketball for when he was ready to retire. Speaking of adaptability, Jon Scheyer was the right fit to replace Coach K as the next head coach. In just two years of coaching Duke basketball, Scheyer has lead the Blue Devils to an ACC Championship in his first season and an Elite 8 just this past season. Scheyer has accumulated 54 wins, (29 were conference wins and 4 were NCAA Tournament wins) in his first 2 years coaching Duke. This new era of college basketball requires a coach to be as adaptable as possible and that's where Scheyer was born ready. We can just look back to when Scheyer played at Duke to see how he was able to adapt. I know Duke fans remember when Coach K asked Jon to move from the shooting guard spot to the point guard spot to help the team. Look how that turned out.. Coach K, Jon Scheyer and company would eventually cut down the nets in April of 2010 for Duke's fourth national championship. Well the current game of college basketball is quickly changing with NIL and the transfer portal. As some Duke fans were recently worried when Duke lost players to the portal... we now see Scheyer and his staff were adapting and preparing to build the upcoming 2024- 2025 Duke basketball roster. Duke has the #1 recruiting class coming in along with Tyrese Proctor and Caleb Foster returning. Scheyer and his staff have also been able to bring in veteran talent in Mason Gillis who transferred to Duke after four seasons with Purdue as well as transfer Maliq Brown who played his past two seasons at Syracuse. And with open spots still left to fill on the roster, Scheyer is not done yet. I write all of this to now go back to the 2 questions above... 1 - Yes Coach K had a plan all along announcing his retirement a year ahead of time to give Jon Scheyer time to prepare for the fast changing landscape in college basketball with recruiting, NIL, the portal, etc... 2 - After 2 years at Duke with an ACC Championship, an Elite 8, and top recruiting classes as well as being able to work the portal, Jon Scheyer was , is, and continues to be the right guy for this new era of Duke basketball. From Duke Sports Information
In the Blue Devils' first public performance under new head coach Manny Diaz, the defense (White Team) held off the offense (Blue Team) for a 21-16 victory in the Blue & White Game on Saturday evening at Brooks Field at Wallace Wade Stadium. The contest featured two 15-minute quarters with traditional scoring for the offense and specialty scoring for the defense, including six points for a turnover, three points for a fourth-down stop, two points for a three-and-out and one point for a sack. On the opening drive with redshirt sophomore quarterback Maalik Murphy calling the signals, the defense secured a three-and-out for an early 2-0 advantage. The offense moved the ball to the 9-yard line on the ensuing drive but was stopped on a fourth-down pass into the end zone, as the defense increased its margin to five points. As sophomore Grayson Loftis rotated in at quarterback, linebacker Tre Freeman broke up a pass on fourth down to push White's lead to 8-0. On Blue's fifth possession, Murphy engineered a 14-play drive with four first downs to set up junior Todd Pelino for a 25-yard field goal, narrowing the deficit to 8-3 with 1:55 remaining in the opening half. Blue implemented its two-minute offense to move the ball from the 25-yard line to the opponent's 35-yard line, but a pass to the end zone on the final play fell incomplete to give the defense a 11-3 cushion at halftime. Out of the break, the White Team added another fourth-down stop to extend its edge to 14-3, but Pelino chipped in again for the Blue Squad with another field goal, this time from 28-yards away, to cut into the deficit at 14-6. On the next drive, although forced into a third-and-long situation following a pass break-up by junior cornerback Chandler Rivers and a tackle-for-loss by graduate student defensive end Michael Reese, Murphy completed a five-yard pass on fourth down to keep the drive alive. After moving the chains, senior receiver Jordan Moore made a leaping grab over a defender at the goal line for the game's only touchdown. The connection from Murphy trimmed the Blue Team's deficit to one point, 14-13, with 8:19 left on the clock. With less than four minutes remaining and still a one-point contest, the offense moved the ball inside the red zone, but a pass toward the sideline by Loftis was intercepted by freshman cornerback Vontae Floyd at the 10-yard line to keep Blue off the scoreboard and push White's advantage to 20-13 at the 3:38 mark. On the final drive, junior safety Terry Moore tallied his second pass deflection of the evening and junior defensive end Vincent Anthony Jr. recorded a sack to force the offense into a long field goal try. On the last play, Pelino drilled his third field goal of the night, a 49-yard boot, but it was not enough as the defense secured the victory. The Blue & White Game was the Blue Devils' final workout of the spring. Duke now turns its attention to its 2024 season opener against Elon on Friday, August 30 at Brooks Field at Wallace Wade Stadium. From Duke Sports Information Additional details have been announced for Duke's Blue & White Game, which is slated for Saturday, April 20 at 6 p.m. Fans that are not able to attend the game in person can watch it on ACC Network. Admission – Free admission for all fans. Stadium entrance at the north Bostock Gate and west Powers Gates will begin at 5 p.m. All seating will be in the west stands (Blue Devil Tower side). CLICK HERE for full stadium map. Parking – Free parking will be available starting at 3 p.m. in the Science Drive Garage (no tailgating allowed) and Grounds (Green Zone/tailgating allowed) lot. See parking details HERE. Accessible parking priority will be located in the Grounds Lot. A state issued ADA placards or license plate is required for designated accessible parking areas. Pregame Fan Fest – From 5-7 p.m., fans can head down to the practice fields behind the main scoreboard to enjoy a football skills challenge, inflatable games, bounce house and obstacle course. Access to Fan Fest will be available by the stairs/elevator located by section 32. Interactive photo opportunities will be set up on the concourse behind section 20. Fan Giveaway – Free 2024 Duke football posters, schedule cards and key tags will be available on the concourse. Concessions and Merchandise – Concessions and official Duke football merchandise will be available to purchase. Additionally, the Duke Team Store, located on Tribull Plaza across from Cameron Indoor Stadium, will be open during its normal business hours until kickoff at 6 p.m. From Duke Sports Information
Fourteen Blue Devils were recognized by the National Football Foundation (NFF) Hampshire Honor Society the organization announced on Wednesday. Representing Duke were Graham Barton, Al Blades Jr., DeWayne Carter, Jaylen Coleman, Nicky Dalmolin, Scott Elliott, Cole Finney, Ja'Mion Franklin, James Hopson II, Jeremiah Lewis, Dorian Mausi, Jordan Moore, Anthony Nelson, and Porter Wilson. The 14 Blue Devils named set a program record. Duke has now placed at least three players on the NFF Hampshire Honor Society in 12 of the last 13 seasons. The NFF Hampshire Honor Society, which is comprised of college football players from all divisions of the NCAA, NAIA, and sprint football who each maintained a cumulative 3.2 GPA or better throughout their college careers. An elite group of 1,989 players from 339 schools qualified for membership in 2024, setting a new record for the number of members in a single year during the program's 18-year history. The initiative has now honored 18,387 student-athletes since its inception. "We are thrilled to honor a record number of athletes as part of this year's Hampshire Honor Society," said NFF President & CEO Steve Hatchell. "Over the last 18 years, the Hampshire Honor Society has served as a powerful vehicle for schools to recognize their college football players who have distinguished themselves both academically and athletically, and we congratulate the schools and each of these young men for their commitment to excellence in all aspects of their lives."blue From Duke Sports Information
The Associated Press announced its final men's basketball top-25 poll on Tuesday afternoon with Duke finishing the 2023-24 season ranked No. 9. Powered by three wins in the NCAA Tournament, including a victory over No. 1-seed Houston to advance to the Blue Devils' 24th Elite Eight, Duke jumped four spots from the prior poll on March 18. The No. 9-ranking to cap the 2023-24 campaign marks the 40th time the Blue Devils have appeared in the top-10 of the final AP poll, representing 53% of all final polls dating back to 1949. Under the direction of second-year head coach Jon Scheyer, Duke was ranked inside the AP top-25 for the entirety of the season, finishing with a 27-9 overall record for the second consecutive year and placing second in the ACC standings with a 15-5 league mark. Want to know how to throw an exciting March Madness party? Read below for the details. It's that time of year when the brackets are out and millions of people will be filling them out in hopes of winning their local office pool. Many people will take the first Thursday and Friday of the NCAA Tournament off work to watch games at home or even their favorite sports bar. I have long argued those two days should be holidays. Employees spending time at work streaming games can have an economic impact on the workplace. A 2021 analysis report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas suggested " that between 23 million and 34.5 million workers would fill out brackets" for the 2021 NCAA Tournament. The report also suggested the 2021 tournament could have possibly cost employers over $13 billion from their workforce. Now fast forward to 2023 NCAA Tournament... According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas the 2023 NCAA Tournament cost employers $17.3 billion dollars. That's $1 billion more than last year. Another stat - $2.55 billion dollars - Lost wages resulting from the possibility of 48% of all workers, or 76,951,200 people, spending at least one hour of one workday on March Madness activities. You can find more information and stats from their report at the link below. https://www.challengergray.com/blog/the-2023-tournament-will-cost-employers-17-3b-1b-more-than-last-year/ A lot of people will have friends over to watch the games. It’s not that difficult or expensive to throw an exciting March Madness party. I’ve lost count of how many years I have thrown a March Madness party. Every year, we seem to up the ante and do something unique. Below are some ideas to help you throw a party your friends won’t forget. The first thing is your setup. Most households own at least 2 TVs and multiple electronic devices. CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV will be showing the games of the NCAA tourney. At some points, you can have 4 games airing at once. My basic setup consist of 3 or 4 TVs displaying games from YouTube TV and 1 or 2 laptops either streaming the other games or displaying the bracket. Over the years, we have changed the lineup. Some years I have used my iPad to display the bracket. One year, I had an iPod (remember iPods?) in the guest bathroom streaming games so that even when nature calls, you wouldn’t miss the game. As you can see, with the basic electronic items that many people own, you can set your house up to rival a Buffalo Wild Wings. The second item on the agenda is the food. Pizza, wings, and buffalo chicken dip seem to be the go-to for my party every year. Pick the food, snacks, and beverages you would like to have at your event. Some years, I have had a friend decorate a Duke themed March Madness cake for my party. As you can see, get as creative as you want with food selections. The third item on the agenda is the extras. This includes things such as decorations, activities, or even souvenirs. The past several years I have bought a 2x3 feet size bracket off Ebay to hang up in the mancave as we watch the games. We update the bracket after each game. This year I splurged and finally got the Fathead March Madness bracket. I bought the giant size bracket... and let me say... this bracket is huge! I also set up my Duke corn hole boards outside as an extra activity. One year I even had custom-made koozies for my March Madness party. Last, but not least is to fill out the bracket and enter a March Madness bracket challenge. There are several sites such as ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS that offer a bracket competition and some offer prizes. I enter online bracket challenges as well as a few local bracket challenges and even help lead one that gives out the coveted FC LAKE2LAKE March Madness Bracketology trophy to the winner. Hosting a party with your friends all in the same bracket challenge just adds to the excitement of March Madness as you all compete to become the winner of Bracketology. All it takes is a little creativity and you can throw an exciting March Madness party! The next 3 weeks, March Madness will be talked about everywhere. Whether it’s coworkers discussing the games over a lunch break, friends getting together at the local sports bar to cheer on their team, or living rooms being turned into temporary sports bars to display all the games, March Madness is truly a unique sporting event that all can enjoy. It’s that time of year again when friends and coworkers across the country are getting together to fill out brackets for March Madness. I am one of those guys who watches the selections shows, surfs different sports websites for their advice, and still buys two different newspapers... (wait... do they still make newspapers?...) to read before filling out my bracket. A couple days later, I find I can’t get through the first round undefeated. But then again, very few get through Thursday and Friday with a perfect bracket. The thing I love about March Madness is that it brings people from different walks of life together. You have your diehard sports fans filling out brackets, as well as people who don’t follow sports but love to fill out a bracket. I have had friends who don’t follow sports who make their picks based on the mascot or even team colors. Several years ago, I joined a unique March Madness office pool at work created by my buddy whose nickname is “The Flo” and have been hooked ever since. What I like about this office pool is that it is something different than your normal “fill out a bracket” office pool. It is a pool for hard-core college basketball fans as well as people who have never watched a game. You need 16 people to do the pool. After the teams are announced on Selection Sunday you take the 64 teams (the teams in the play in games are both grouped in one team slot) and split them into 4 groups. The groups below are the following: #13 – #16 seeds - Low #9 – #12 seeds - Mid-Low #5 – #8 seeds - Mid-High #1 – #4 seeds - High Look at the image below (it is from a previous March Madness year) to get an idea of how the teams are divided in groups. Each of the 16 people in your pool each get a team out of the 4 groups listed above. You could put the teams in 4 hats and do a random draw or you could use a computer to generate the pics. It is a fair pool, since everybody ends up with a low, mid-low, mid-high, and high seed. If one of your 4 teams is the winner of the NCAA Tourney, you win the pool. For this pool, I used the old school method of cutting out the 64 teams and grouping them in the 4 seed groups. Some years I have used my 2010 Duke national championship cups :) to shake up the pieces of paper and draw out each person's picks at random. See pic below. We here at Duke Report have created the pool with myself @Skeelow22, Josh @joshuacox and 14 Twitter friends/followers who responded to a request to join. Below are the results of the random selections for the 2024 Duke Report - Unique March Madness Pick 'Em Pool. The last 2 years I even added a snake draft style (pic above as you can see with the arrows marked by a sharpie) to mix it up as I randomly chose teams from the cups. As you can see, this is a unique office pool. I myself take a sharpie and scratch out the teams as they are eliminated from the tournament. There is no better feeling as a Duke fan than marking out North Carolina from the pool as they get eliminated. With Selection Sunday already completed, this is another pool you can do along with filling out the brackets. Winner of the Duke Report - March Madness Pick 'Em Pool will receive a small Duke prize. Enjoy March Madness and Go Duke! It's that time of year when hardcore college basketball fans as well as casual fans come together for the NCAA Tournament. March Madness is one of the most popular sporting events and unique in its own way. Unlike college football, that had a four team playoff last season, to now a 12 team playoff for the upcoming season, to possibly a 14 team playoff in the future, college basketball has arguably the most pure and fair form of a tournament in all of sports. The NCAA selection committee picks the top 68 teams to go dancing. There is talk out there of expanding the tourney.. but hopefully the powers that be don't ruin what is arguably the best tournament to exist. Also unlike college football - if you win your conference tournament in basketball, you go to the NCAA Tournament. It doesn't get much fairer and to the point than that. Even if you don't win your tourney, if you play a tough schedule and pull off a lot of wins, you still go dancing. There is no perfect process to pick teams, but the NCAA tournament is as close as you can get. Now that the bracket has been released, you will see people from all walks of life, gathering at the office water cooler, or at a sports bar, or maybe even meeting in a group Zoom meeting to discuss strategies on picking their bracket. You will have the person who spends hours and hours analyzing data such as college basketball conference standings, KenPom rankings, strength of schedules, as well as other data and statistics only to see his/her bracket get busted when a Cinderella pulls off an upset. You will also have that one person who makes picks based on team colors or mascots end up winning the office pool. March Madness has a unique way of bringing together the hardcore and casual fan. Once Thursday gets here, you will have fans watching games from everywhere and anywhere possible. Many will take off work the first two days of the NCAA Tourney (Thursday and Friday - not the play in games) to watch games at home, a local bar or chain restaurant like Buffalo Wild Wings that display multiple TVs. At certain times in the NCAA Tourney, you can have four games going at once. You will also have many employees who don't take off work but instead watch the games at work by streaming through devices like their laptop, tablet, or iphone using the company wi-fi. This is why I have long argued that the first two days (not the First Four in Dayton) of the NCAA Tournament (but Thursday and Friday) should be an optional holiday. You don't see events like the Super Bowl, College Football Playoff, World Series, and NBA Playoffs being played during normal working hours. Employees spending time at work streaming games can have an economic impact on the workplace. A 2021 analysis report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas suggested " that between 23 million and 34.5 million workers would fill out brackets" for the 2021 NCAA Tournament. The report also suggested the 2021 tournament could have possibly cost employers over $13 billion from their workforce. According to the report.. "that would mean 72,114,720 workers are participating in March Madness activities while at work. Using this figure multiplied by the average hourly wage, the games could cost employers $2.16 billion per hour." To see the full 2021 analysis report from Challenger, Gray, & Christmas click on the link below. Challenger, Gray, & Christmas 2021 March Madness Report The above was from a 2021 analysis. One would think that with arenas and stadiums full again for the 2024 NCAA Tourney, that all those numbers and statistics will go up. March Madness attracts several viewers to the NCAA Tournament games. Several years back, the NCAA and CBS Sports teamed up to offer the March Madness on Demand web streaming service. With the app, you now can watch games from your iPhone, and tablet to go along with watching games on your laptop and TV. With just owning a few basic technology items, one could turn their living room into a mini Buffalo Wild Wings, streaming all the games being played at the same time. Check out the pic below from my 2023 March Madness Party to get an idea. In 2006, the gurus at CBS Sports took it to a new level with the famous "BOSS" button. The BOSS button allows viewers to watch games at work but quickly be able to bring up a fake email, spreadsheet, flow chart, etc.. if somebody walks by their computer. CBS Sports reported a few years back there were 2.77 million clicks on the BOSS button. Now that has been 18 years ago since the creation of the "BOSS" button. Times and technology have changed since then. Click on the link below to see a 2019 article from USA Today on the history of the BOSS button. History of the BOSS button To see a discrete history of the "BOSS" button click on the link below from NCAA.com www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2023-03-19/march-madness-boss-button-discrete-history As you can see, March Madness has continued to embrace the use of technology. Office pools are another popular event that goes along with March Madness. Billions of dollars will exchange hands the next few weeks as people from all walks of life will participate in office pools across the country. Filling out the bracket the Monday after Selection Sunday has become a pastime for many fans. According to a 2018 USA Today article, the American Gaming Association estimated the following… The amount that will be wagered on this (2018) year’s tournament, only $300 million of which will be done legally at sports books in Las Vegas, according to the American Gaming Association. With sports betting now legal in more than 30+ states ( I believe currently 38 states and Washington,D.C.), one would think the amount of sports betting (legal with sports books as well as office pools) on the NCAA Tournament will surely increase. CBS, Yahoo, ESPN and other sites offer up cash and/or prizes for a perfect bracket. In 2014, Warren Buffett upped the ante by offering one billion dollars to the person who had a perfect bracket. Warren Buffett is no fool when it comes to investing money. His challenge brought even more attention to Yahoo Fantasy sports, as Yahoo and Quicken Loans partnered together to launch the billion dollar bracket challenge. The challenge opened to the first 15 million qualified entrants. By late Friday of the first round of games, out of the fifteen million brackets, none were left perfect. It didn’t help that Mercer upset Duke and Dayton beat Ohio State in the first round to shatter millions of brackets. As you can see, Warren Buffett placed a safe bet that ended up bringing a lot of hype to the bracket challenge and he didn’t have to give out a dollar. Over the years Warren Buffet has then offered a bracket challenge to his employees in which they would receive one million every year for life to the employee that could pick a perfect Sweet 16. None of his employees have been able to do that. However, in 2017, one employee came very close correctly picking 31 out of the 32 games. He didn't win the one million a year for life, but did win $100,000 prize for having the best bracket. Who has scored the best March Madness bracket ever? According to an Investopedia.com article (link below) - " With 49 games accurately predicted in a row, Gregg Nigl of Columbus, Ohio, scored the best March Madness bracket ever recorded. In 2019, the neuropsychologist was the first person to reach the Sweet 16, eventually breaking the streak in its second game when two-seed Tennessee lost to three-seed Purdue. " https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/082714/what-are-odds-getting-perfect-bracket-warren-buffetts-1-billion-march-madness-bracket-challenge.asp Still trying to achieve the perfect bracket is always a challenge many fans dream of. Every year, I myself think, "yeah this is my year to finally produce the perfect bracket." Well, a quick Google search will give you the statistics of having a perfect bracket. Here are the odds from a recent NCAA article: “Jeffrey Bergen, a professor of mathematics at DePaul University, has been crunching numbers on the topic for years. And they don’t look good. Bergen says that the chances of someone filling out a perfect bracket is 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. That’s one in more than nine quintillion. To put how large that number is into proper perspective, Bergen reports that if you were to begin filling out random brackets now and stacked each of the 9 quintillion pieces of paper on top of each other, the stack would reach all the way to the sun and back…over 3,000 times by the time you finished.” You would have a better chance at winning the lottery than producing a perfect bracket. As USA Today stated, “You’d have a better chance of hitting four holes-in-one in a single round of golf.” Even with the odds NOT in your favor, fans across the country will come together at the water cooler starting Monday to discuss their strategies and why they think their bracket is going to be perfect this year. The next 3 weeks, the March Madness Effect will be everywhere. Whether it be fans attending the games at different locations across the country, co-workers discussing the games over a lunch break, friends getting together at the local sports bar to cheer on their team, or living rooms being turned into temporary sports bars to display all the games, March Madness is truly a unique sporting event that all can enjoy. |
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