Advertisement

NCAA tourney brackets: Most popular pick only garners 30 percent to win

Jay Hart
Senior editor

Play Tourney Pick'em  |  Fill out your bracket  |  Print it  |  Celebrity Challenge

Odds are by Friday night there will be no perfect brackets left in Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick 'Em. And that's not just because this year's tournament is so wide open.

In the 17 years Yahoo Sports has hosted a bracket challenge, only once has anyone finished the first round unscathed. Brad Binder did it in 2014 when he (briefly) flirted with the chance to win a billion dollars.

So take some solace in that come Thursday when your bracket is in tatters, because you won't be alone, especially this year.

Consider this: The favorite to win the tournament, according to Yahoo Sports users, is Kansas, yet only 30 percent picked the Jayhawks to win it all.

Final Four picks? Not even a quarter of users think No. 1 seed Oregon will advance to Houston, while less than 20 percent are choosing Virginia, another No. 1 seed, to advance that far.

Chalk that up to reputation, just as you can for Kentucky coming in as the fourth favorite among users despite being a No. 4 seed. (Yeah, yeah, John Calipari thinks the Wildcats got no respect.)

Here's a prediction: your bracket that's busted Thursday when, say, Duke is bounced in the first game of the tourney, could be a winner come April 4 when Texas A&M (picked by less than 1 percent of Yahoo Sports users) wins it all.