Blue Devils Blog - Unique March Madness Pick ‘Em Pool

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 Blue Devils Blog have created the pool with myself @Skeelow22, and 15 Twitter friends/followers who responded to a request to join. Results of the random selections are below.

Twitter Handle	#1-4 Team	#5-8 Team	#9 -12 Team	#13 -16 Team
@BigD9172	Arizona	Texas A&M	Providence	Vermont
@Dukeblogger	Tennessee	Iowa	Illinois	Furman
@Skeelow22	UConn	Missouri	Oral Roberts	Kennesaw St
@rheidrick24	Xavier	Maryland	Auburn	Kent State
@2Dukegirl21	Alabama	Iowa State	VCU	Howard
@M_Bulger19	Purdue	Miami	Utah State	Texas Southern/FDU
@TheDukeNation	Texas	San Diego St	Drake	TAMU-CC/SEMO
@Julian_Austin24	Baylor	Michigan State	Boise State	Montana State
@bfmsguy	Indiana	Saint Mary's	Charleston	Colgate
@craziekaye1	Marquette	Memphis	Arizona St/Nevada	UCSB
@mc_0413	Houston	Arkansas	USC	Grand Canyon
@joshuacox	Virginia	TCU	West Virginia	Princeton
@boucher1113	Kansas	Northwestern	Florida Atlantic	Iona
@apace_12	Kansas St	Creighton	Penn St	Northern Ky
@mattmabe19	Gonzaga	Duke	NC State	UNC Asheville
@hyejam23	UCLA	Kentucky	Mississippi St/Pittsburgh	Louisiana

This year I even added a snake draft style (pic below 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....(when they actually make the NCAA Tournament lol). With Selection Sunday already completed, this is another pool you can do along with filling out the brackets.

Winner of the Blue Devils Blog Unique March Madness Pick 'Em Pool will receive a small Duke prize. Enjoy March Madness and Go Duke.