President Obama released his annual bracket predictions for March Madness Wednesday, with undefeated Kentucky projected to beat Villanova in the championship game.
The bracket shows a president who’s way too conservative on March Madness, playing it safe and unwilling to take a chance on underdogs.
Every team in Obama’s Final Four this year is either a one-seed or a two-seed. Every one seed makes it to the Elite Eight, with no team seeded higher than three making it that far.
For comparison, half of the Elite Eight teams last year were seeded above three, with a seven-seed and eight-seed making the Final Four and, eventually, the championship game. Granted, March Madness is typically not quite so mad.
Obama’s bracket does go along with some common upset picks: picking one two-seed to lose in the round of 32, one double-digit seed to make the Sweet 16 and choosing two 12-seeds to upset 5-seeds in their first game.
This is the first time Obama has ever picked a two-seed to miss the Sweet 16, although it’s happened seven times in his presidency, at least once in every year except his first. Obama’s selection of 10th-seeded Davidson to reach the Sweet 16 is just the second time he’s picked a double-digit seed to get that far. Since Obama took office, 17 double-digit seeds have made it to the Sweet 16, with two of them making it to the Elite Eight.
One of the easiest ways to win a bracket pool is to stick with the higher-seeded teams, but the real fun in predicting brackets is choosing several underdogs and celebrating their rare upset victories.
Obama does deserve credit for not playing politics with his bracket predictions. Carl Bialik of FiveThirtyEight analyzed Obama’s brackets last year and found “no relationship whatsoever” between Obama’s bracket predictions and presidential election data. It would be foolish to think an election result might hinge on Obama’s casual sports predictions, but this year at least looks different. Three of Obama’s Final Four teams are in states that voted for Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, as are 10 of his Sweet 16 teams.
Bialik also noted Obama’s record of picking very few upsets, saying, “The president has predicted a far smaller number of round-of-64 upsets than the tournaments have produced…President Obama backs favorites to win even more than they have historically.”
Obama’s bracket favors the top 1 percent of college basketball teams. When will we get a president with the courage to help the middle-class of March Madness?
