🏀 It Costs $1,801.30 to Watch March Madness, Here’s How

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Every year, I use a handful of trends to predict the winner of March Madness, and I regret to inform you that I’ve never been more confident in my bracket.

I’ll break down my findings at the end.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: It Costs $1,801.30 to Watch March Madness, Here’s How

📉 Biggest Loser: I Officially Found the Worst Take in March Madness

🏆 Winner’s Circle: How One Man (Almost) Accidentally Filled Out a Perfect Bracket

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🗞 The Big Story

It’s going to cost $1,801 per person to watch March Madness this year, but not in the way you might think.

Fan Survey: The Action Network recently sent out a survey to 3,000 full-time working college basketball fans and asked them these four questions:

• Do you care more about the NBA or your NCAAB team?

• Have you ever called in sick to watch a March Madness game?

• What would you give up to get a perfect bracket?

• How much time per day do you spend checking March Madness scores?

And some of these answers are wild:

• 62% of respondents said they care more about the NBA than their favorite NCAAB team

• 4/10 workers said they’ve called in sick to watch a March Madness game

Plus, here's what people would give up for a perfect bracket:

Time is Money: But by far the craziest part of this survey is how much time March Madness takes up in all of our lives.

The Action Network found that fans with full-time jobs are still checking scores an average of 2.4 hours per day for a total of almost 17 hours per week — with most of that happening between the hours of 9-5.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every lost hour of productivity costs the U.S. Economy about $107.22.

This means by watching March Madness this year, you’re costing the economy approximately $1,801.30. And if you multiply that number across the 11.6 million U.S. adults with full-time jobs who are also basketball fans, that’s a total of $20.89 billion in lost productivity just because of a basketball tournament.

But honestly, we all work too hard anyway.

📉 Biggest Loser

This is one of the worst takes in sports, and it could cost teams millions.

Background: Since 2011, the NCAA selection committee has scheduled the last four at-large selections and the lowest-seeded automatic bid winners to play in the First Four.

Critics of the First Four, like Jon Rothstein, have said this is unfair and should be tweaked to include only the final 8 at-large bids, giving all automatic qualifiers a guaranteed spot in the first round.

There’s just one problem with this idea:

It would actually be horrible for most of these teams.

More Games, More Money: Every year, the NCAA sets aside a pool of money called “The Basketball Fund” that they use to pay out each team, depending on how far they advance.

Technically, this money gets paid to that team’s conference and then split between teams, but in any case, last year, that total pool of money was worth $171 million.

This means that each game a team plays in the tournament is worth $342,000, but that’s not even the best part…

Because the NCAA pays that amount every year for the next six years, making the actual value of every game played in this year’s tournament worth over $2 million between now and 2031.

And that can be program-changing money for many of the automatic qualifiers this year, such as Alabama State.

Program-Changing Money: The 16-seeded conference champion won their First Four game this week against another 16-seed. This means they’ll now be getting paid for playing in two tournament games, earning them $684,000.

For context, the Hornets men's basketball team only made around $832,000 last season, meaning just by winning one game, they’ve almost doubled their total program earnings.

However, if they were to have just started in the first round against (1) Auburn, like many critics of the First Four want, then they would have only gotten paid for playing in one game.

Plus, I don’t really see what the problem is letting a few evenly matched teams get the chance to actually win a game in March Madness before eventually getting blown out by 40.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

The greatest bracket in March Madness history was filled out on accident by a guy who forgot he even made it.

Chasing the Impossible: Before 2019, the longest a bracket had ever been perfect was just 39 games. This record was set in 2017 and was done by someone who picked every first-round game correctly and half of the second round before Iowa State lost to Purdue. 

The odds of picking each one of the 67 March Madness games perfectly is about 1 and 9.2 quintillion, but for one week, a random fan from Ohio came closer than anyone ever has before.

Sick Day: On the first day of the 2019 tournament, 45-year-old Gregg Nigl woke up feeling horribly sick. This wasn’t ideal because he and his family were set to travel to Vermont in two days for a ski trip. So, to recuperate, he called in sick from work and planned to lay on the couch and watch basketball all day.

However, he was so sick that he never actually turned on the TV, only later finding out that No. 1-seed Gonzaga had won their first-round game by 40 and No. 13-seed UC Irvine had pulled off an upset over Kansas State.

Fast-forward two days later, and Gregg felt well enough to make the 12-hour drive to Vermont during the Round of 32; however, he was completely unaware of the history he was making.

The Call: Upon waking up on Sunday morning in his ski lodge, he had a message from a co-worker who said the NCAA was trying to get ahold of him.

Confused, Gregg called them back on Monday and learned that he had accurately predicted the first 48 games of the tournament correctly. That’s every game in the first two rounds, something the NCAA believes has never happened before.

But then they told him something he wasn’t expecting.

His bracket was in a group called “center road,” and it was the only bracket in that group.

What’s even crazier is that Gregg has no recollection of even filling out the bracket they were referring to. But as the NCAA representative kept talking, a dazed memory crept back for Gregg.

He vaguely recalled getting an alert an hour before the tournament tipped off on Thursday when he called in sick from work. He was really out of it that morning but recalls filling out one final bracket just before tip-off.

And this was the bracket that ended up being perfect.

During the call, the NCAA offered to fly him and his son out to LA at the end of the week to watch his Michigan Wolverines play in the Sweet 16.

Gregg agreed and embarked on a trip that included:

• Press tour

• $500 in spending money

• Rental car

• Hotel

• Tickets to the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games

Beating the Odds: That Thursday night, Gregg hit his 49th straight pick with a Virginia win over Oregon, which meant he was 80% of the way to a perfect bracket.

Experts estimate that Gregg had a better chance of winning the Powerball twice than correctly picking the first 49 games.

But then, as he settled into his seat to watch Michigan take on Texas Tech, he got a notification that Purdue had beaten Tennessee in overtime… ruining his perfect run.

So Close, but So Far: And things only got worse from there. Gregg missed on three of his eight Sweet 16 games, and only one of his Final Four picks made it.

Not to mention that neither of the teams he had in his championship, Kentucky or Gonzaga, even made it to the Final Four.

The most ironic part is that by the time the tournament finished, Gregg’s bracket probably would have finished in the middle of the pack in most bracket pools.

But at least he’s still the proud holder of a record that will probably never be broken.

📚 Required Reading

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

100% of National Champions since 2002 have had two things in common:

1. They’ve made it to at least their conference tournament semi-finals

2. They’re a Top 40 KenPom offense and a Top 25 KenPom defense

And the only 11 teams that fit those criteria are:

• (1) Duke

• (1) Auburn

• (1) Florida

• (1) Houston

• (2) Tennesee

• (2) Michigan State

• (3) Wisconsin

• (4) Maryland

• (5) Clemson

• (5) Michigan

• (8) Louisville

However, when I filtered for above-average 3-point shooting teams (above 36%) and considered injuries, I was left with a Final Four of:

(1) Auburn, (1) Duke, (4) Maryland and (5) Clemson

But a No. 5 seed has never won the championship, and the last 14 champions haven’t come from the conference with the most teams in the tournament (SEC - 14), which left me with Duke and Maryland in the Natty.

And with a No. 1 seed winning 13 of the past 17 championships, I took Duke to win it all.

Here’s the full breakdown.