The 1st Annual NCAA Nerd-Off Rules:

Once the Nerd Council has received your submission, we will run your program and interpret your results (i.e. the bracket realization your model predicted).  These results will be uploaded to the website as soon as possible, so you know which teams you should be cheering for instead of doing real work (slacker).  If we have any problems with the execution of your program, we will contact you directly and try to solve the problem.  However, there can be no substantial changes made to the code once the games have begun, so please make sure your program runs cleanly before submission.

Please note that submissions become the property of the Nerd Council, and we intend to publish all results on the website; however, your program code will not be released without permission. (see Disclaimer for more details)

Please keep the bios and abstracts relatively clean, as we may deny those deemed inappropriate for publication. 

Please use only the software applications which have been approved by the Nerd Council! This is very important! If you would like to use an alternate program, please ask in advance so you don’t waste your time. Approved software (we assume you have legal access):

• C++
• EViews
• Excel (but we’ll make fun of you)
• Gauss
• IDL
• Mathematica
• Matlab
• R
• SAS
• Stata
• Visual Basic

You must fill in your own data sheets. It is a good idea to get a start on this before Selection Sunday (roughly 36 hours before submissions are due), as you should have a fairly good idea of who many of the teams will be before then.

Your model must include some random component. More specifically, ANY OUTCOME ALLOWED BY THE BRACKET FORM MUST BE ATTAINABLE BY YOUR MODEL, i.e. assuming they make the tournament, there must be some positive probability that the model selects Gardner-Webb as its champion. Yes, even Gardner-Webb.

Please adhere to the Spirit of the Competition. We understand that you are all capable of writing a model which gives said Gardner-Webb championship a probability of 0.00000001, but that’s not very interesting. The goal should always be to create the best model possible, despite realizing that there is a very good chance that the ‘best’ model will not be the one who best predicts the eventual outcome (that one is the ‘luckiest’ model… a term which will come in handy when our girlfriends beat us by choosing teams based on jersey color… Yeah, right, like Nerd Council members can get girlfriends). Respect and embrace the randomness, even if your model spits out something ridiculous that would never happen… Like George Mason in the Final Four. In short, people are putting blood, sweat, some tears, and very scarce grad student free time into this; don’t be a dick.

Yes, you have predict the play-in game.

You will receive 1/2 a point for correctly predicting the play-in game, 1 point for correctly predicting the teams which make the 2nd round, 2 points for the teams that make the Sweet Sixteen, 4 for the teams that make the Elite Eight, 8 points for the teams that make the Final Four, 16 points for the teams that make the Championship, and 32 points for correctly predicting the NCAA Champion.

Cost of entry is free, and thus, this is not gambling. We will be offering prizes of $300, $150 and $50 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place this year, courtesy of PercentageSports.com. If you choose to make side bets within your department/social network, that’s on your own.

It is your responsibility to spread the word about this competition! The more people we can get involved, the better the competition will be.