Yeah, that is a big part of what makes the tourney the best sporting event.

The overall #1 seed, rated by statistics and a collection of panelists, has won the NCAA tournament 3 times since they began ranking the #1 overall seed in 2004. 3 times out of 19. If the NCAA tournament played a best of 3 series for every game, I would bet that the overall #1 seed would have won at least 10 times (minimum) in that same timeframe.

Nobody is arguing that good teams don't win natty's, but to say that the tournament format is not a crapshoot for the best teams each season is blatant ignorance towards the stats.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't change the format one bit. Just saying that the tournament is a crapshoot.

Chaos is a huge part of what makes the tourney the best sporting event.

Tournament is clearly a crapshoot. Take nothing away from last year's title, but there were probably at least a half dozen Self-run KU teams that were just as good as last year's team that didn't get anywhere near the same kind of favorable draw.

My bad, I should have typed "another instance" of it being a crap shoot. But I mentioned 2014 uconn as the only real example of that since 2000.

Curious, what do you consider a crap shoot? Someone outside of the top 5? 10? 15? winning the tourney?

So you roll the dice, which is a crap shoot, what are your odds for winning?

I think the issue with the term “crapshoot” is that it implies every team has an even chance of winning it all, which obviously isn’t true.

It is though a crapshoot amongst the capable teams.

It’s more like the NBA Draft Lottery (a weighted lottery) than a normal raffle.

Having the best team doesn’t guarantee anything, but does weight the odds in your favor. You can still get unlucky and lose to a bad team.

A bad team winning 6 straight games against other tourney teams just isn’t very likely though.

Many years there are probably 8-12 teams who "could" win it all with 2-4 favorites.

Add in the one and done nature of the tourney, and shit happens.

Shut. Up.

Hard to believe it’s going to be 35 years since that game.

Yep.

Be healthy. Peak at the right time. Have a player or two who can bail you out of trouble when you need it.

Those are pretty much the keys to winning it all.

It also helps if your team is named the Kansas Jayhawks if you want to win it all!!

Okay now THIS is epic

I'm curious if people think that the NFL playoffs are as unreliable (or random, or whatever) as the NCAA. Both of them only have 1 game to either move on or go home.

I'd assume the common thought around here is if the Chiefs and Bengals played a best-of-whatever series last year that KC would have advanced.

The difference is that the NCAA MEN'S Tourney is played at neutral sites. At least in the NFL, the teams earn home playoff game(s).