Chalk, Seeds, and Entropy in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

Ira Horowitz

Journal of Gambling Business and Economics, 2016, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-12

Abstract: Based on the results of the 63 games played in each of the 32 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournaments held from 1985 through 2016 it is shown that the information content of the seeding of the 64 teams invited to participate as to the seed of the eventual winner, varies from year to year, but not in any consistent fashion. The paper thus concludes that the Selection Committee’s seeding process has not improved over time, notwithstanding the availability of more sophisticated metrics for evaluating the teams’ regular-season performance. The fact that a 1-seed wins some 60 percent of the time and a top-three-seed wins 88 percent of the time only reflects the fact that the committee is not seeding the teams at random, but rather is exercising a modicum of judgment, aided and abetted by the tournament’s design.

Keywords: NCAA Basketball Tournament; Chalk; Seeds; Entropy; Information and Uncertainty; Selection Committee (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ubplj.org/index.php/jgbe/article/view/1221 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:buc:jgbeco:v:10:y:2016:i:3:p:1-12

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.jgbe.com/index_files/Page492.htm

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Gambling Business and Economics is currently edited by Leighton Vaughan Williams, Nottingham Business School

More articles in Journal of Gambling Business and Economics from University of Buckingham Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dominic Cortis, University of Malta ().