Lifestyle
Bracketology a settled national pastime as the 2025 NCAA Tournament arrives
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — When Bryce Yoder needs a study break this time of year, the college student flips on a TV and attends his favorite March Madness class — bracket science.
The 19-year-old sports management major at Indiana University-Indianapolis studies hard to learn the secrets of picking winners in the nearly dozen NCAA Tournament bracket pools he hopes to enter before Thursday’s first-round games. It takes time, patience and some lucky bounces to get those picks right.
Yoder is hardly alone. Millions of Americans — from hard-core sports junkies to casual fans and school alumni to those with no rooting interest — engage in this annual national pastime by filling out a tourney bracket and seeing how they fare. Winning is possible, though few hold out much hope of a perfect bracket: The NCAA says the odds of that are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 if you wing it and a still-absurd 1 in 120.2 billion if you know a bit about hoops.
For players like Yoder, it’s more about proving he’s the best.
“The satisfaction of being right,” he said in explaining why he fills out so many brackets. “Really, it’s about having the best bracket possible, whether that’s with my friends and family or just the leaderboard over a random bunch of people that I’ve never met. I’m just so competitive.”
From online gambling to office pools to family contests, brackets are big business and a big distraction. A study released in 2023 by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a work outplacement firm, estimated $17.3 billion is lost in productivity during the three-week tourney. A Finance Buzz survey back then also found 36% of employees tune into the games during work hours, and nearly 25% use paid time off or sick days.
Even elective surgery companies now advertise that customers can have mid-March procedures so they can recover — and watch basketball — at the same time.
In the beginning
It seems almost unfathomable today, but brackets meant virtually nothing for about the first 50 years of the NCAA tourney, which dates to 1939 and this year is holding its 86th edition.
During the ‘70s, though, the changes began in earnest.
The NCAA tourney expanded from 25 to 32 teams in 1975, the first year leagues could send two teams. Seeding started in 1978, and the field grew to 40 in 1979 and to 48 in 1980 when organizers dropped the restriction on how many league teams could play.
But the real revolution really with the 1979 title game between Michigan State and Indiana State.
Indiana State’s Larry Bird, left, lies on his back to toss the ball during a scramble with Earvin “Magic” Johnson, right, during NCAA Championship game in Salt Lake City, Utah, March 26, 1979. (AP Photo)
That Magic Johnson-Larry Bird matchup drew a 24.1 television rating, still the tourney record, and it gave everyone a glimpse into what college basketball’s biggest event could become at the same time an 8-year-old boy named Charlie Creme looked into his future.
“I cut the (men’s) bracket out of the newspaper in 1979 and had it on the pantry door in my family’s kitchen,” said Creme, now ESPN’s women’s basketball bracketologist. “I was filling it out, making actual predictions and I couldn’t wait till a game ended and I could run up to the pantry door and advance the next team in the tournament. Within a couple years, I was making my own brackets with big pieces of oak tag (paper) and a pencil and a ruler.”
Soon, he’d have company as the tourney grew.
America’s first all-sports network, ESPN, broadcast the 16 first-round games, 12 on tape delay, in 1980. CBS wrested the broadcast rights away from NBC in 1982 with a three-year deal for $16 million annually and the promise of expanded coverage including the first televised selection show.
Suddenly, brackets mattered and broadcasters such as Dick Vitale stoked long debates over which teams belonged, which did not and who would win games. Live, daily telecasts on ESPN spurred interest, too, heading into 1985, the first 64-team field and introduced a future NCAA executive to fill out the bracket.
“The first one I remember filling out was 1985,” said Dan Gavitt, the son of Big East co-founder Dave Gavitt and now the NCAA senior vice president for basketball. “I had four Big East teams in the Final Four and I was right on three of them. Boston College got beat by Memphis in in the regional finals.”
Gavitt, like Creme, was hooked and brackets became fashionable.
Could it happen again on the women’s side? Perhaps.
After seeing ticket sales, television ratings and coverage of the sport soar in the last few years with more to come thanks to stars such as Paige Bueckers, Hannah Hidalgo and JuJu Watkins, Creme thinks women’s brackets are on a similar trajectory.
“We might be seeing 1985-95,” Creme said. “Star players in the men’s game back then, stuck around longer. Right now we’re in that period where Caitlin Clark played four years in college and as the rules stand now, JuJu Watkins has to play four years and Paige could if she wanted — she’s not going to — but could stick around another year. That’s where the men’s game was in that period.”
Upset city, baby
In its infancy, the bracket phenomenon was geared to teenagers and college students like Yoder who watched multiple games.
Soon, office pools and games among family members with entry fees and prize money became popular, too. In some cases, all you did was pluck a name out of a hat.
Back then, the NCAA frowned on such practices, labeling it gambling. Today, the NCAA runs its own online bracket game as part of its “fan engagement.”
Still, the prize pool only fueled interest. So did the 1980s national championship games that became must-see TV — and the upset factor.
FILE – In this April 1, 1985, file photo, Villanova’s Ed Pinckney (54) yells out as he is surrounded by teammates after defeating Georgetown 66-64 in the NCAA college basketball Final Four championship game, in Lexington, Ky. (AP Photo/Gary Landers, File)
From surprising title runs by North Carolina State in 1983 and Villanova in 1985 to Princeton’s near-upset of Georgetown in 1989, it seemed every team was in the mix and nobody would pick all the winners.
“There will never be a perfect bracket,” ESPN men’s basketball bracketologist Joe Lunardi said. “That’s just not going to happen. When Warren Buffet offered $10 million for perfect bracket, he knew he wasn’t going to pay that out.”
Those daunting odds haven’t stopped anyone from filling out brackets.
“If I feel really strongly about a game, I’ll probably pick the same outcome more times than not,” Yoder said, referring to how he handles multiple brackets. “But I try to throw some silly type of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily have a good chance of happening, like upsets, because that’s just naturally going to happen.”
The tools
In this May 27, 2010 file photo, President Barack Obama looks over the bracket with Duke University basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, where he honored the team. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Figuring out how to pick teams and games has evolved the years.
Selection committee members use tangible measures such as wins and losses, strength of schedule and NET rankings to round out the 68-team field. Other measures include quad victories, which vary in how they’re compiled and applied. In an era of analytics, sites such as kenpom.com have become regular components for hard-core and casual fans.
The NCAA certainly is paying attention.
Gavitt said he filled out brackets in the early years of the NET just to see how reliable the rankings were to results And when the topic of expansion is broached, NCAA officials look to see how the potential new bracket would fit on a single printed page.
The question, of course, is how far can this go and whether artificial intelligence can become the next big thing when it comes to picking winners.
“If AI did it, then the analysis would not be as much fun or as interesting,” Creme said. “I don’t know that the NCAA would ever go that far. I kind of hope not because I like the human element. If it’s eliminated, if we know the AI formula, then it’s sort of over.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
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LONDON (AP) — “Doctor Who” and Eurovision unite for an evening of music and intergalactic adventure on Saturday — all thanks to Russell T Davies.
Before fans tune in for the annual song contest, they can enjoy Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and Varada Sethu’s Belinda Chandra attending the Interstellar Song Contest in an episode of the sci-fi series.
In real life, the Eurovision Song Contest is an annual musical competition and TV event that sees 37 countries compete for a crystal microphone trophy over a four-hour live broadcast. In the interstellar version, aliens from 40 different worlds vie to win, also by singing.
Davies says it took three years to pull it off the doubleheader because they had to work with the BBC to set the schedule and storylines in stone to ensure a perfect alignment.
Britain’s Sam Ryder took a “Space Man” to Eurovision before, in 2022. Now, Gatwa will read out the U.K.’s jury scores during the song contest’s grand final, held this year in Basel, Switzerland.
Talking to The Associated Press, Davies says that both Eurovision and “Doctor Who” share the DNA of old-fashioned Saturday night television, making the combination “irresistible.”
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: Do you feel that Eurovision and “Doctor Who” naturally share a kind of fandom?
DAVIES: I almost think every episode of “Doctor Who” is a great big celebration, sort of noise and color and spectacle, and that sums up Eurovision as well. In pitching this to Disney+ as well it’s like, “Look we’re going out in 60 of your territories” and Eurovision itself has a viewing figure that some years is bigger than the Super Bowl. There’s not many shows that can say that on planet Earth.
AP: How much fun did you have with the lore of Eurovision?
DAVIES: It’s enormous fun. It could be said if you’ve never seen a single Eurovision Song Contest in your life, you can still come along and watch this. It’s the kind of thing we’d have made up for a “Doctor Who” story anyway.
One day I’ll do that “ABBA Voyage” story where the holograms come to life and start killing people. That’s the best idea ever. We’ve got to do that one then. Can you imagine? That would be just amazing. I think there might be some copyright problems with that but we’d overcome them.
The actual pitch for the story to Juno (Dawson), who wrote it, was Eurovision meets “Die Hard.” So as you will see, the moment it starts, there’s trouble, someone’s out to sabotage it. There are villains behind the scenes trying to disrupt the program. All chaos is let loose and the rest of the episode is spent saving people’s lives after that.
AP: How about the songs?
DAVIES: I think there’s four songs in total (by Murray Gold). Obviously we don’t get to all 40 planets with their songs, but it was a very big production. We had to hive this off into its own production unit. There are scenes in the television gallery, where 40 different monitors have output of 40 different screens. And that’s all been fed in live. That’s not done with green screen afterwards, that’s all stuff they’d already shot. Crowds, acts, rehearsals, backstage, presenters, all of that stuff, playing onto that set, so it’s terribly complicated.
“Doctor Who” showrunner Russell T. Davies explains why an intergalactic spin on the Eurovision Song Contest was an irresistible storyline for Season 2’s May 17 episode. (May 13)
AP: Is this the most expensive episode of “Doctor Who”?
DAVIES: Frankly, they’re all expensive. It was a lot, yes. It had to be planned very far in advance, more than any. Once you plan something carefully, then it costs less just because you’re not busking. We allocate each story more or less the same amount of money. So I think it ends up costing as much as the others, but it just looks so good because they had so much time to plan it.
AP: Am I allowed to ask how much an episode normally costs?
DAVIES: We never say that. I don’t know why, but we just don’t ever do it. I don’t think they’d tell me. I’d faint.
This image released by Disney shows Christina Rotondo from “Doctor Who” Season 2. (BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf via AP)
AP: Are you planning to watch Eurovision this year?
DAVIES: Yes, I will be. This will be a great night. I always sit and watch “Doctor Who” — I’m old-fashioned — on its old-fashioned BBC One transmission at 7 o’clock at night.
I know people who have Eurovision parties, which I’ve never gone to actually. Look at my life, it’s devoted to television. I can’t bear other people talking over it. That would just be a nightmare. So I will be sitting in. I’ll get some nice dinner. I’ll be a very happy man.
AP: Have you got any favorites for this year?
DAVIES: I would like to go on a date with the man from Cyprus (Theo Evan). He’s beautiful. I do like the U.K. entry this year (“What the Hell Just Happened?” by Remember Monday). I have a theory it’s being underestimated in Great Britain. Just because we’re so used to losing. We’ve won five times, everyone. But this country gets a bit cynical about Eurovision sometimes. But I love our song. I think it’s got a very memorable chorus.
U.S. retail egg prices fell in April from the record-high prices they hit earlier this year, according to government data released Tuesday.
The average price for a dozen Grade A eggs declined to $5.12 last month after reaching a record $6.23 in March, according to the Consumer Price Index. It was the first month-to-month drop in egg prices since October 2024.
Overall, the average price of eggs of all sizes fell 12.7%, the steepest monthly decline since March 1984.
While wholesale egg prices have been coming down for a while, it was unclear how much store prices would decrease in April because consumer demand is usually high around Easter and Passover.
Still, retail egg prices remain near historic highs as a persistent outbreak of bird flu wipes out flocks of egg-laying hens. The April average price for a dozen large eggs was 79% higher than the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported for the same month a year ago, when the price averaged $2.86 per dozen.
Bird flu has killed more than 169 million birds since early 2022. Any time a bird gets sick, the entire flock is killed to help keep bird flu from spreading. Once a flock is slaughtered, it can take as long as a year to clean a farm and raise new birds to egg-laying age.
That can have an effect on the egg supply because massive egg farms may have millions of birds. Outbreaks on two farms in Ohio and South Dakota last month affected more than 927,000 egg-laying hens.
Lowering egg prices has been a particular focus of President Donald Trump. In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would invest $1 billion to help farmers improve their biosecurity measures to fight bird flu.
The U.S. has also increased imports of eggs from South Korea, Turkey, Brazil and other countries. According to Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute Sector Manager Kevin Bergquist, the volume of egg and egg product imports increased 77.5% during the first three months of the year compared to the same period a year ago.
The antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating Cal-Maine Foods, the largest U.S. egg producer, which supplies around 20% of America’s eggs. Cal-Maine confirmed the investigation in early April..
Ridgeland, Mississippi-based Cal-Maine said its net income more than tripled to $508.5 million in its most recent quarter, which ended March 1.
For many, the return of the spring garden brings with it a sneezy, itchy, foggy-headed feeling that hits the moment a warm breeze stirs up invisible trouble. I’m fortunate not to suffer much, but my blue car turned a chartreuse shade of yellow last week, and a $32 car wash provided results that lasted only two hours. Sigh.
These seasonal allergies often go by the old-fashioned name hay fever, but it’s not the hay that causes misery for so many, it’s the pollen.
And not just any pollen, but the nearly weightless kind that floats up our noses and engages our immune systems. Trees, weeds, grasses and even some of our favorite flowers are culprits.
But pollen isn’t all bad. It’s essential to the reproduction of plants, the survival of insects and the entire food web. We humans could not survive without it, so we absolutely shouldn’t avoid high-pollen plants as a general rule. However, if you’re an allergy sufferer who has had to forgo planting a garden due to health reasons, plants that release the least pollen may enable you to smell the flowers.
Plants that might bring sneezes
Allergy-inducing plants are those that rely on wind rather than bees or butterflies to spread their pollen. Ragweed, which strikes in late summer and early fall, gets the most notoriety, but its springtime counterparts can be at least as irritating.
Trees most likely to cause symptoms include birch (Betula), catawba (Catalba), cypress (Cupressus), elm (Ulmus), hickory/pecan (Carya), oak (Quercus), sycamore (Platanus) and walnut (Juglans), according to the Ogren Plant Allergy Scale (OPALS), created by horticulturist Thomas Ogren and published in his 2020 book, “The Allergy-Fighting Garden.”
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
Palm trees, too — but only the males. In fact, female trees don’t produce pollen at all, so seek them out when possible.
Grasses can irritate eyes and sinuses, too. The scale ranks Bermuda (except sterile male varieties), Johnson, Kentucky, orchard, sweet vernal and timothy grasses among the highest for allergens.
Weeds like ragweed, curly dock, lamb’s quarters, pigweed, plantain, sheep sorrel and sagebrush are also big pollen producers, Ogren found.
Not all plants are irritating to allergy sufferers
On the other hand, plants with “double” flowers or heavier pollen that doesn’t travel far are less likely to release much pollen.
Among trees, apricot (Prunus armeniaca), fig (Ficus), fir (Abies), fruiting pear (Pyrus), fruiting plum (Prunus domestica, Prunus insititia), redbud (Cerus), serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis), female ash (Fraxinus), female box elder (Acer negundo), female cottonwood/poplar (Populus), female maple (Acer), female palm (Arecaceae) and female willow (Salix) are easier on the respiratory system.
St. Augustine and sterile male Bermuda are safer bets in the grass department.
As for flowers, you’ve got options: Begonia, female clematis, columbine, crocus, daffodil, delphinium, hibiscus, impatiens, iris, bird of paradise, pansy, petunia, phlox, poppy, snapdragon, tulip, verbena and zinnia are friends. Roses, too — especially tightly packed, dense-petaled varieties, which exude even less pollen than those with single or semi-double flowers (rose allergies are more often fragrance-related than due to pollen, according to Ogren).
And if you suffer from seasonal allergies, keeping windows closed and getting someone else to mow the lawn will also help to nip your symptoms in the bud.
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Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.
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For more AP gardening stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/gardening.
