In 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was advised “Beware the Ides of March.”

Today, in 2019 A.D., we have come to advise you: beware the madness of March.

While you probably (hopefully) don’t have to worry about (literally) being stabbed in the back 23 times by your closest friends, your March may be spent in just as much of a frenzy after agreeing to participate in the Recruiters Websites Bracket Challenge!

The Basics

In case you don’t know, every March, the NCAA hosts a Division I basketball tournament, known as March Madness. The purpose of the tournament is to determine who will be the named the best college basketball team that season.

Sixty-four teams will compete over the course of a 63-game single elimination tournament with the final game taking place in early April.

The “bracket challenge” portion of March Madness allegedly started in a Staten Island bar in 1977 with only 88 participants. Just 40 years later, in 2017, approximately 70 million brackets were filled out with $10.4 billion bet on the tournament.

The bracket challenge allows for avid and amateur college basketball fans alike to attempt to predict the results of each game and, in turn, the overall winner before the tournament begins. Each accurately predicted game earns a set number of points (we’ll explain this more in detail later).

How to Pick Your Bracket

“Bracketology” is not an exact science. Like each recruiter has his or her own way to find and match candidates for clients, bracket challenge participants have their own methodology for picking their winning teams. Common methods range from a simple coin toss for each game to having your dog pick the winners (here’s a video of a good pup doing just that for your viewing pleasure).

You don’t take the easy way out in recruiting and you probably want a more scientific method to determine your bracket. According to the NCAA, the most accurate predictions use the statistics and ranking (seeding) of each team to mathematically select the winners of each game.

The Odds

Lucky for you, the odds you’ll deliver the perfect candidate to your client are better than the odds of selecting the perfect bracket.

Using the coin toss method, the odds of picking the perfect bracket is about one in 9.2 quintillion. Using the more scientific method based on seeding increases your odds of winning to one in 128 billion—meaning you have a better chance of being struck by lightning (those odds are one in 700,000) than picking the perfect bracket.

Why Play

Because it’s fun!*

The Specifics

Before the challenge begins, here are some things you should know:

Important dates:

• March 17: Take a break from your St. Paddy’s festivities to watch Selection Sunday. The 68 teams invited to play in the tournament will be announced at 6 p.m. ET. For our challenge, the First Four are not included in the bracket picks.
• March 21: The First Round games will start at noon ET. Your bracket must be completed by this time and cannot be changed.
• April 8: The Championship Game will determine the overall winner of the tournament. The time of this game is TBA.

The points:

The winning bracket is determined by the number of points earned by the end of the tournament. Each winning game earns points that increase as the tournament progresses.

• First Round: 1 point per winning game
• Second Round: 2 points per winning game
• Sweet Sixteen: 4 points per winning game
• Elite Eight: 8 points per winning game
• Final Four: 16 points per winning game
• Championship: 32 points for the winning team

In the event of a tied score after the championship game, the winner will be chosen based the closest guess to the final game score.  

What you win:

1. The bracket tournament champion wins a personalized trophy sponsored by NPA Worldwide.
2. The final four entrants will each be awarded an Amazon gift card valued from $200 to $25.
3. Bragging rights.

For a full list of rules and information on how to enter, click here.

Thank you for your interest in the Recruiters Websites Bracket Challenge. We are are so excited for the fun to begin!

*We’re hoping Guinness World Records gives us an award for Shortest Subtopic in a Blog Ever.

THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS

• 

• 

• 

•