Saturday, June 28, 2008

Watching...waiting

The 2007-08 season is over and now it's time to get ready for the 2008-09 season. That won't start until November 1.

Join the newly created Facebook group and discuss the upcoming season.

Are you a bracketologist and would like to be a part of The Bracket Matrix this season? Please read the following:

1. You need to set up a web site to place your bracket that will be consistent throughout the season. A blog will do. A web site will most definitely do. A bracket posted on a message board will not do. The link will change frequently and will get lost in various discussions, making it difficult for the average reader to find it. (Exception: A message board devoted exclusively to bracketology.)

2. You have to tell me where your site is. I don't have a sixth sense when it comes to finding these things. I rely on you and readers like you to tell me what kind of sites to add to this page.

3. The NCAA sets up procedures and principles for building a bracket. Read them! A seriously flawed bracket won't be posted. However, if your seedings are out of the norm, I'll still most likely post it provided that the principles are followed and you have an explanation as to why you've built the bracket like you did. I reserve the right to not post a bracket with something like a winless team as a #1 seed.

4. Please date-stamp your bracket. Brackets of a certain age will be removed from the list, and if there's no date-stamp, obviously I can't tell when your bracket was updated.

5. To make it easier on me, please format your bracket so that at least half of it can be seen on the screen at any one time. You can make it even easier for me by publishing a seed list of your 65 teams. Only brackets that seed at least 48 teams will be listed in the matrix.

6. No new sites will be added to the 2009 page after March 1 unless you have appeared in previous versions of this page, in which case, you will be grandfathered in. In addition, no bracket will be accepted to the final matrix of the season after the beginning of the Selection Sunday show.

7. Your bracket will be updated in the matrix only once per day at a time of my choosing. Exceptions to this rule are brackets with a national following and the top 5 performers in the Bracket Matrix from the previous season according to the Paymon rubric. More details will be forthcoming in January.

8. I'm only one guy. If this could pay me what I get at my regular job, I'd update this site 24/7. That simply is not the case. If someone else can do this better, I'll gladly step aside, but from the looks of it, I'm the only (crazy) one. So if you don't see your site on here, an update hasn't been done for a while or I don't respond to you, I hope you'll understand why.