MAD (ness) Trends

It's that time again to break out your brackets and try to predict the future. This is always the most fun time of year for sports fans who love Cinderella type runs, but those upsets are also the reason why it's almost impossible to pick an accurate bracket. Whether your picking style is analytics driven and you rely upon statistics and research or you might be the type of selector to go with your gut and pick uniform colors or cute mascots, every fan will be engaged and everyone also knows there will be a lot of X's crossing out bad bracket picks.

History isn't always the best harbinger of things to come and shouldn't be solely relied upon, especially in sports betting and predicting, but this can give us a pretty good look into what the future 'might' hold. With that said let's take a look at some of the best bracket trends.

The first thing we need to get out of the way right off the bat is that the public isn't always wrong. The public traditionally takes #1 seeds to cut down the net at the end, and for good reason. Over the past 25 tournaments, 26 of the 50 championship participants have been the top seed. In fact, since the mid '90s a #1 seed has won the championship in just under 20% of the time. For comparison, the #2 seeds have won at an under 10% clip.

One of the biggest trends that seems to now have been saturated with everyone jumping on the bandwagon is the #12 seeds to beat the #5 seeds. In the past decade #5 seeds are 21-19 to advance against the 12 seeds. Also, for those who are betting games and not merely just filling out brackets the five seeds have been crushed to the tune of 15-24-1 against the spread. Things haven't gotten any better recently as the trend continues where the 12 seeds are 8-4 against the spread and exactly .500 over the past three tournaments.

The trend that has been more profitable though has flown under the radar a bit is the #13 seeds upsetting the 4's. At least one 13 seed has advanced in 15 of the past 20 tournaments. Usually they come with some huge moneyline odds. In fact, five times since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, there have been two 13 seed upsets in the same bracket. That includes two in the past few years in 2018 and 2021.

Sure, we might not have a St. Peter's type run again this season but we are sure to have some upsets. Instead of blindly backing trends, the best course of action is to back experienced coaches, pace of play, and defensive efficiency ratings. So, maybe you will still do hours of research to find the best analytics and statistics or maybe you will still root for that cute mascot, but trends can sometimes help make a bracket rather than bust those brackets.