You have your bracket printed out and you have your five bucks in hand (unless you’re one of those NCAA tournament pool deadbeats that everybody hates). So now what?

Filling out your NCAA tournament sheet is one of the rites of spring, right up there with taking down your Christmas lights and wheeling your grill out of the garage. But as anyone who has lost a pool to a 9-year-old can tell you, anything more than 15 minutes spent on the task is a complete waste of time.

That is particularly true this year. If you haven’t been paying attention to college hoops, all you need to know is this — anyone who tells you they know who’s going to win is lying. Your kid’s pet iguana has as much a shot of picking the Final Four as they do. Diving into a deep analysis of matchups is fruitless. Yes, sticking with teams who typically overachieve in March, or quickly eliminating those who typically underachieve, is usually a solid strategy for the first weekend or two. But automatically penciling in Michigan State or Connecticut to advance, or quickly erasing Villanova or Gonzaga, really only takes care of about one quarter of your bracket, at best. Too many teams have a mixed or even no tournament history.

If this season has told us anything, we are in store for one of the wildest tournaments in NCAA history. Parity now rules college basketball. And when parity rules, there are no rules, bub.

Given the parity, this may be the year a No. 16 finally beats a No. 1. Or, it may be the year everything goes chalk. See what I mean? It’s chaos.

So now, I humbly submit a few alternate strategies for filling out your brackets. None of them will work, but they’re a heck of a lot more fun than agonizing over whether Michigan State’s RPI trumps Syracuse’s WBBC (WannaBe Bob Costas’) Index.

• School colors/uniforms: Let’s just get this one out of the way because it’s become a cliche for every office pool column — Gladys the receptionist won the jackpot last year because she liked Duke’s uniforms. Nike has turned this strategy on its head in recent years by designing uniforms for some teams to use exclusively in the tournament, creating sort of a bait-and-switch. Unless someone is bringing back Marquette’s old untucked jersey look, don’t fall for it.

• Basketball as football: Some people like to imagine each tournament match-up as if it were a football game. This is fun until you get to Seton Hall vs. Gonzaga. Plus, Division I college football is still a joke. Keep it as far away from college basketball while it still has some dignity.

• Best vacation spot: I know of at least two people who have used this strategy and both finished in the money in their respective pools. But we have a little bit of a problem this year — Hawaii is in the tournament for the first time since 2002. Oh sure, it could take two minutes to fill out the bracket this way (unless and until the Rainbows run into Wichita State, of course). But this would be like filling out a women’s tournament bracket — we all know who’s going to win.

• More dangerous mascot: Another cliche, but it’s still fun to do the research on this one and learn about the mascots of more obscure teams, or even to learn what a Tar Heel is. It’s even more fun to debate who would win a fight between a terrapin and a jack rabbit. But then you get a matchup of two Wildcats or two Bulldogs and you’re stuck.

• More notable alumni: This is fun because some of these major universities are really lacking in terms of distinguished alumni. I’ve never heard of anyone who attended Gonzaga besides John Stockton. It also provides some unexpected twists. For instance, one would think Yale has it all over Baylor in the alumni department. But then you find that Willie Nelson, Vinnie Johnson and Crystal Bernard are all Bears, and now you have a 16-over-1 type upset. As a side note, this strategy always makes me even sadder for Maine alums that the Black Bears will never get in the tournament.

• Academics: This is the favorite of people with a conscience. But they often make some crucial mistakes, You can’t do this based on assumptions. Duke vs. Kentucky may look like a no-brainer on the surface. But grades and testing aren’t as standardized any more. For all we know, Duke’s players can’t even spell their coach’s name. This requires too much research and breaks the 15-minute rule.

• Political bias: Missouri didn’t make it. Sorry.

It’s not a question of whether any of these methods work. You and I both know they won’t, unless we decide not to enter a pool but still fill out a bracket for fun. Then we’ll get them all right.

Good luck. And if, like me, you end up with a Final Four of Maryland, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Michigan State, you still have time to do something more sensible with your money.

Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638

rwhitehouse@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @RAWmaterial33

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