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In The Spreadsheet at 25, I talked about cool or unusual things people do with Excel. One of the things that I do with Excel is track a March Madness pool. The spreadsheet that I use to track the pool has really evolved over the years.
In my books, I talk a lot about the crazy things that managers ask you to do in Excel. Back in the early-1990's,
I had manager come and tell me that I would be in charge of starting an NCAA Basketball pool in our office. I turned to Lotus 1-2-3 to track everything. It was painful upfront, entering everyone's picks, but then for the rest of the tournament, everything was automatic.
If you are based in the U.S., the odds are that you are already playing in your local office pool. It seems that everyone - sports fans or not - loves to fill out the bracket for a chance to win.
Feel free to submit your picks as well to the MrExcel March Madness pool.
If you are not from the U.S. - read more below about the contest below the rules.
My local rules:
- 1 point for each correct pick in the first round
- 2 points for each correct pick in the 2nd round
- 3 points for each correct pick in the 3rd round
- 4 points for each correct pick in the 4th round
- 5 points for each correct pick in the 5th round
- 6 points for each correct pick in the 6th round
- For the tiebreaker, predict the total number of combined points scored by both teams in the final game. Example: if you think the final game will be 71-68, your tiebreaker would be 139.
- There is no fee to play.
- Prizes will be awarded to the top 3 entries.
- First prize: LiveLessons - 6 hours of Excel training on DVD.
- Second prize: Charts & Graphs for Excel 2007.
- Third prize: Pivot Table Data Crunching.
- We will pay to ship your prize, but if you are outside the U.S., there might be brokerage fees or customs on the incoming shipment. These are your responsibility.
- Entries must be submitted on the MrExcel 2008bracket.xls workbook. We have an automated process to read these forms. Do not alter the form, insert rows, columns, delete things, or otherwise screw up the workbook. If our automated macro can not make out your entry, your entry is disqualified. (You know, in the local pool, we don't have to warn anyone about this. But - as a reader of this site, you are far smarter about Excel than anyone in the local pool!)
- When you enter, you must provide a real, working e-mail address. This will be kept secret.
- When you enter, you must provide a name or a nickname. Your MrExcel Message Board ID would work great! Standings will be posted a dozen times throughout the tournament. Everyone who enters will be listed high to low by this name. If you want to stay hidden from your boss, feel free to use a nickname.
- By entering, you will have your entry name published throughout the contest on the MrExcel website with your score in the contest.
- One benefit of our system: the process is automated, so the commissioner has more time for witty comments about various oddball picks of the players. If you choose a cinderella team to make it to the final four and are right, you will be praised in the comments. On the other hand, if you are wrong, you will be identified as being a bit too risky.
- No purchase necessary to play. Void where prohibited. Yadda yadda.
To play:
Download 2008Bracket.zip.Unzip Bracket.zip to reveal 2008Bracket.xls. Complete the form in Excel. E-Mail the form back to ncaa2008@mrexcel.com by Wednesday at Midnight, eastern standard time. Throughout the tournament, I will add some articles about the Excel behind the system. Results are posted daily at marchmadnessresults.html. Guide to the NCAA Basketball Tournament
I realize we have a lot of readers from outside of the US, so here is the basic deal. To determine the college Division 1 basketball championship, the NCAA chooses 64 teams to enter a tournament each March. The tournament bracket is split into four regions. In each Region, 16 teams are chosen and ranked from 1 through 16. Some of these teams get automatic berths to the tournament - by winning their conference championship. The remaining teams are picked by committee. In Round 1 of the tournament, the #1 seeded team plays the #16 seeded team. There are (obviously) 32 games in round 1, 16 games in round 2, and so on, until two teams meet in the finals. U.S. workplace productivity takes a nosedive each March. The tournament picks will be announced on Sunday March 11, 2007. On Monday morning, the USA Today newspaper will print the bracket. This bracket will be photocopied millions of times in offices across the country. Everyone makes their picks, then turns in their picks with $5 or $10 or whatever the office agrees upon. Rather than gamble here, the MrExcel competition is free - with prizes supplied by me. To play is easy - you select the winner in all sixty-three games. How do you choose? Well - that is where the magic comes in. Some people choose the higher seed all the way through, although this doesn't always work out well. Some people choose the team with the nicer uniforms. While this doesn't always work great, some years it might be the winner. Once you select the winner in the first 32 games, you will then select the winners for the 16 games in Round 2. Games in round 2 are worth 2 points each, so it gets a little harder to pick an upset or go with the home town favorite in Round 2. Continue filling out the bracket until you've selected the winner. Correctly picking the winner is worth only 6 points, so it is very possible to win the contest by doing well in the early rounds. Why the March Madness contest in 2008 at MrExcel? A few years ago, a friend from a local company ran a pool and asked me about using Excel to make the system easier. I dusted my Lotus workbook off, converted it to Excel, and we've been using it for three straight years now. The program gets better each year. Back in 2004, I wrote that it was designed to make the life of the commissioner very easy. You enter the picks using a hotkey system, and then from there on out everything is practically automatic. Last year, for the local pool, we added a new Excel front end that people can use to enter their picks. This addition would make it possible for a commissioner to easily run a pool of any size. This year, the entry spreadsheet is improved by Mike Rittenour. I will again use the system here locally in the office pool, but wanted to run a second contest using the software to hopefully test it out with a larger population. Over the next 3 weeks, I will post more here about the mechanics of the Excel worksheet used in the pool. If there are other commissioners out there who are looking for software to manage their pool, drop me a note and I will share the system with you. For the BEST TV show on technology, check out Call for Help. This tip was originally published on March 11, 2006 and updated on March 9, 2007 and then on March 16, 2008. The permanent URL for this page is http://www.mrexcel.com/ncaa.html. If you are looking for show notes from another episode, visit my complete list of TechTV appearances.
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