Amazing championship game for the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament.
With few “Cinderellas” this year, the Team Rankings benchmark predictions did better than 99.7% of the 3.2 million entries in the ESPN Tournament Challenge. I managed to outperform Team Rankings slightly with my odd prediction that Villanova could make the Sweet Sixteen.
But I didn’t realize when we set up the 2008 NCAA Bracket Econbrowser Challenge that some real professionals would move into our little neighborhood. Congrats (in addition to the promised honor and/or glory) to H. Parsley, who successfully predicted not just the tournament winner, but also the teams in the championship game, the Final Four, and the Elite Eight. Parsley was top dog in the Econbrowser pool and in the top 99.98% of the 3.2 million national entries. Second and third went to M. Goodrum and C. Ashbee.
Seems pretty darn good to have come in fourth in such a group, and in fact the same entry was good enough for first place in the Environmental Economics NCAA Pool, which actually offered a prize. I eagerly await my bumper sticker advising “Drive Less”.
I’d like to be the second to congratulate Mr. Parsley for his superb picking; still an honor to have shared Davidson with him. Mine was quite the spectacular fall, and I credit that for helping me realize that basketball is quite a silly sport anyway. It’s time to return to my thuggish hockey roots.
Quite the screamer of a final. Especially when you’d picked KU.
And I’ll be third: congrats H. Parsley! And N. Klingenstein – picking Davidson was the best kind of calculated risk. They had quite the unheralded and impressive team defense.
And thanks, professors, for Econbrowser. Of the 3.2 million economics blogs out there, few are steadily both well reasoned and readable.
::re-lurks::
H Parlsey — What a bracket. To have picked Davidson for the elite eight and KU to win it all …
I didn’t follow at all this year, so I just mindlessly plugged in the Team Rankings picks. A mind is not always a terrible thing to waste.
Econbrowser for fun and profit!
First, I would like to thank Professors Hamilton and Chinn for hosting this event and for always providing interesting and relevant economic analysis here. Your econ blog is one of my favorites. Secondly, there was no rhyme nor reason to my picks this year. As in most things like this, Lady Luck played the greater part plus I was somewhat biased having grown up in NC(hence the Davidson pick) and having attended KU. I guess it was just my year. Finally, I hope we can all do it again next year and maybe I’ll be more “reasoned” in my picks and see if that works as well…See you next year!!!