(03-31-2022 08:29 AM)Bronco14 Wrote:  People are cheering for the blue-bloods when blue-bloods play the potential Cinderella's. People prefer blue-bloods. It's just the reality, unfortunately. People don't start caring about the Cinderella's till they actually are the Cinderella, & even then who knows if they're actually pulling for the Cinderella or just want to make sure the blue-blood they picked going deep makes it deep.

I legitimately cheer for utter chaos in the first round (so long as it doesn't destroy my brackets). I only turn on 16-1, 15-2, or 14-3 seed games when they're close or the upset is happening, otherwise they're boring to watch. After that (especially if it doesn't impact my bracket or it's already busted) I always will root for the Cinderella.

I might be an outlier there though, but I believe the logic in this post is likely outdated and that people legitimately want the underdog to win (when it's not against their team).



Edit: just being extra clear here. There's only one team that wins a bracket - I'm okay with literally any other upset in the first round and beyond. Once my team is out I'm rooting for every upset.

(03-31-2022 08:29 AM)Bronco14 Wrote:  People are cheering for the blue-bloods when blue-bloods play the potential Cinderella's. People prefer blue-bloods. It's just the reality, unfortunately. People don't start caring about the Cinderella's till they actually are the Cinderella, & even then who knows if they're actually pulling for the Cinderella or just want to make sure the blue-blood they picked going deep makes it deep.

People like both.

(03-31-2022 08:29 AM)Bronco14 Wrote:  People are cheering for the blue-bloods when blue-bloods play the potential Cinderella's. People prefer blue-bloods. It's just the reality, unfortunately.

Every arena I've been in for an NCAA Tournament upset, the whole arena was cheering for the underdog except for the favored team's fans. The reality appears to trend towards the opposite, if anything.

(03-30-2022 07:30 PM)Go College Sports Wrote:  They have plenty of fair ways of assessing seasons. One example would be to use kenpom's predictive rating system, which isn't perfect but is unbiased. If they had done that this year, the only difference in selections with respect to the non-P6 conferences would have been Dayton replacing Wyoming in the field.

Predictive metrics do not work as a fair way. Just look at columns on Ken Pom's site: specifically SOS and Luck. It calls experienced teams "lucky" which is silly, when the top 20 in Luck were 19 very experienced teams (plus Wisconsin); and the the SOS column reflects the inherent flaw with any system.

The P5 can rack up good efficiency margins vs bad teams in OOCguarantee games, while the non-P5 can't because they're not buying as many games (or getting bought themselves); and then when they play conference games, any losses are offset by the "SOS factor" which the non-P5s can't benefit from.

And the result is stacking tons of P5 teams in the Top 50, while New Mexico State is down in the 80s because the WAC had a bad OOC. New Mexico State beat UConn in the first round. If KenPom was so good at predicting winners, why isn't KenPom retired off gambling winnings. KenPom is a novelty until the day he reties a billionaire.


Kevin Pegula made his own index... and he described in interviews how he had to play with weights to get his index to show something that looked like how he perceived the landscape to look. And that's the problem: You're trying to make a metric which backs up what you believe. And if the Metric spit out that St. Peter's was #17 in the country during the regular season, you'd ADJUST THE METRIC to show something that made "more sense."