The madness starts now. Brackets have been announced, and people are making picks for office pools all over the nation. For those of you who do not know the difference between the Big 10 and the Big 12 (not related to the Big 5 Sporting Goods store), here are some tips to follow while filling out this year's brackets. I will only charge 10% of your winning for this service.

Rule 1: Never pick a school with 'State' in its name when the school name is not a state. This year, this rule only affects Murray State. Murray is not a state and the team, despite having drawn a 12 seed, will be doomed to lose its first game. This is the only rule I follow every year. (This rule can be found in the Mad Cal archives.)

Rule 2: Closely related to rule 1, do not pick any team that has a directional word before a state name when the directional word is not part of the actual state name. There are 6 teams that have no chance of victory due to this rule: Northern Iowa, Central Florida, Eastern Washington, Southern Illinois, Western Michigan, and East Tennessee State (this school actually violates rules 1 and 2, so stay away from even thinking about picking them).

NC State is the only school with a direction and a 'State' that should be considered a safe pick.

Rule 3: Any team from a conference with a conference name involving the words 'Mid', 'West', or 'Western' will lose in the first round. Pacific (Big West), Utah, BYU, Air Force (Mountain West), Nevada, UTEP (WAC), Alabama State (SWAC), Valpairiso (MCC), Florida A&M (MEAC). Gonzaga, although in the West Coast Conference, (WCC) will lose in the second round because their first round opponent, Valpairiso is in the Mid-Continent Conference, and Mid is weaker than West.

Based on these rules, the results of 16 first round games (17 if you count the play-in game) have been determined.

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