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The musings of a Detroit-area sportswriter in the digital age.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Barack-etology


People are getting all riled up about the presidential NCAA bracket. I think it's great he can relate to the common man like this. As far as a I know, he filled out an ESPN bracket (which you can link to via the White House blog).
The Asssociated Press is reporting the number of brackets filled out online is greatly increasing, leading me to believe our beloved tournament teasers may be phased out of print editions as early as next season.

More and more people filling out brackets online
NEW YORK (AP) — The growth in popularity of filling out NCAA tournament brackets online shows no signs of slowing down.
More than 5 million entries were submitted to the contest on ESPN.com before it closed Thursday. That's up 37 percent from the 3.65 million last year. At the peak period, nearly 3,900 entries per minute were submitted.
Louisville, Memphis, Pittsburgh and North Carolina are the most popular Final Four picks.
The entrant with the most points at the end of the tournament wins $10,000.

I don't know what the bracket limit was, but 5 million is surely saying something.
We still run the brackets in print, but I remember in years past cutting out the field of 64 and filling in picks, keeping them under lock and key for the next two weeks. This year I filled out two brackets on paper, entered another where we drew teams out of a hat (I got Eastern Tenn. State and Dayton) and a free bracket on the Free Press Web site, which is cool because it goes round by round.


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