Published on 03/12/2006

Do you spend hours every year filling out your brackets only to lose the company office pool to the 9-year-old daughter of Phil from accounting? Well columnist Dave McElwee has some pointers on how to make this your year to take home the prize.

I really enjoy fantasy sports.

I like buying the draft magazines and reading online about injuries and projections. I enjoy sifting through mock drafts, player rankings and reading too much into preseason stats.

Generally, I feel like I do the requisite amount of research to assure I’ll take my friends’ and co-workers’ money. Every August I feel ready for football. Every fourth February, ready for curling.

But why then have I not won a championship in any sport since my glorious 1997 fantasy baseball run? I’ll tell you why. Because far too often, blind luck outweighs preparation.

For the next few days, hundreds of thousands of good-hearted betting folk around the nation will take part in the annual March tradition of gambling on the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. And you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to spend countless hours pouring over seedings, travel times and RPI while some soccer mom in Tulsa thinks the orange in Bucknell’s uniforms looks really cool and actually picks Kansas to lose.

So I got to thinking, why bother working hard this year? Why not learn a lesson or two from our Oprah-watching competition? Heck, maybe you’ll even make a buck or two on the tournament this year.

With that said, I give you Dave’s Rules to Not Trying Hard and (likely) Winning:

First things first. Under no circumstances should you watch anything on ESPN, Fox SportsNet or, for that matter, CNN. In fact, don’t turn the TV on during the seeding stages. Unsubscribe from all sports-related Web sites. Change your home page to LLBean.com.

Next – and you’ll have to get on this one quick – trade in your current car in for a minivan. No way can you possibly be expected to randomly win something as complicated as a March Madness bracket while driving around in a cool car. Actually, if you aren’t currently at your local seedy car dealership, I’d concentrate on your fantasy golf pool. Realistically, you have no chance in college hoops.

Now, I’m not saying you need to literally go out and buy a purse, but I would strongly suggest picking up a fanny pack. Your wallet, keys and cell phone will only make you uncomfortable when sitting at Starbucks, and you’ll need full concentration when correctly deciding the font on Winthrop’s jerseys is way cooler than Gonzaga’s.

(By the way, on a quick side note, I hate Belmont. Any team that keeps Lipscomb from entering the Big Dance, well, this is a family Web site, and I don’t want to say anything out of turn. Wish I had gone to Lipscomb, though.)

Now that you have no clue what you’re doing, waited three hours for a 800-calorie latte, and filled out your kids’ Stanford-to-Lipscomb (I really like typing that) transfer papers, it’s time to get down to the business of winning this thing.

There are a couple of ways to blindly pick a winning NCAA tournament bracket. Some are better than others, but this country is all about choice, and I’d like to give you a few.

Picking teams out of a hat is always fun. Always choosing a school with “State” in its name works. But if you really want to make a splash this year, be sure to choose teams that have a cute animal as their mascot. Who doesn’t love a cuddly Husky, Wildcat or Saluki?

Once you have the first few rounds figured out, don’t out-think yourself. One way to ensure victory is to simply pick the higher seed. You’ve come this far, and the last thing we need is you thinking you might know something no one else does.

You might think that once you have your bracket filled out and ready to go, your job is done. Well, you’d be wrong. Filling out the winners is only half the battle. What you’re going to need to focus on now is making sure that everyone – and I mean everyone – in your office knows you have zero knowledge of college basketball… or sports in general, for that matter.

What I suggest is meshing together a few bits of sports’ terminology around the water cooler. For instance, when one of your coworkers argues that there was no way anyone could have known Murray State would knock off UConn (don’t worry, you picked it right!) be sure to make assorted comments about how good the Racers looked on special teams, and how exciting it was when they scored all those runs.

And to confuse them a little more, be sure to key them in on your favorite-color-theory. Trust me – guys love it when you assure them that you just knew the dark blue team would play really well against the dark green team.

Once you’ve established yourself as the most ignorant person in the office, its time to think about what you’re going to do with all that money. Some people would say to invest it or maybe splurge on something nice for yourself. Personally, I think the move here is to buy some t-shirts and sweatshirts of the winning team – especially if the team that ends up winning it all is more than 1,000 miles from your alma mater or is Duke. Then wear your new wardrobe to work with for the rest of the week! The Championship Game is always on played on a Monday, so you’ll have four full days to gloat. Use them to your advantage. Finally, take any remaining dollars and gear up for your office’s fantasy football league. You’re riding a hot streak, and as any athlete you’ve never heard of would say, you never mess with a hot streak.

Well, that’s about it. I hope you found this informative and useful. Wish good luck to everyone else this year, because with my rules, you’re a shoo-in for taking the tournament. Go Belmont!

Dave McElwee is a regular columnist for Atomic Sports. He is also the general manager of the San Diego Siege women's professional basketball team, and a man who really, really enjoys buffalo wings. He can be reached at dave.mcelwee@atomicsportsmedia.com.