March Madness 2012: Why It's Foolish to Fill out Bracket with Tons of Upsets

Don't fool yourself, picking a bunch of upsets in your March Madness bracket does not make you any smarter, cooler or basketball savvy.

In fact, it makes you foolish, or very lucky.

Let's be frank, more often than not the better teams are going to win. There's a reason why they are favorites—they are much better than everybody else in the field.

The odds are in the favor of the favorites. That is in fact, why they are favorites.

It's a pretty simple equation, isn't it?

Everybody wants to see the Cinderella story and everybody wants to pick the big upset. In fact, some will tell you that the numbers are actually in favor of picking some upsets. When taken at face value, I can see how that is possible, but lets break it down just a little bit further and find the truth about upsets.

Here's how Charissa Thompson of ESPN's Numbers Never Lie looks at the bracket:

She makes some pretty compelling points, but let's breakdown a few of the points to see what's really happening here in regards to picking upsets.

Round of 64: 12 seed has has won 24 of last 27 years:

While that's certainly an interesting stat, consider that you have a one-quarter chance of picking the right 12 seed. VCU is a 12 in the South region this season and was last year's Cinderella. What are the percentages of the Rams doing it two years in a row? It certainly muddies things up a bit, doesn't it?

If you can only get one upset right, that means you would get three wrong if you went with all of them, and that would essentially ruin your bracket.

Sweet 16: Two teams seeded 10 or lower got to Sweet 16 12 out of last 15 years.

This looks like an impressive stat, but it really has a ton of flaws for those looking to pick upsets.

With 16 teams in each region, that means there are 28 teams seeded 10 or lower after the First Four. The chances of picking the correct two (should it be two in a given year) are miniscule.

That doesn't even factor in to the three years that two teams didn't make it in the last 15 years.

What Does This Mean?

There are different philosophies to picking March Madness brackets. There is a case for picking multiple upsets, but there is also a very strong case for picking the better team.

I'm in the favorites camp. They are ranked higher because they are better, and the percentages are in their favor of moving on.

That being said, this is what makes March Madness so crazy, because you never really know.

If you're asking me though, it's foolish to pick a ton of upsets.

Don't be upset guy.