Sunday, March 15, 2009. 8:13 pm. Posted by BracketMan.
Well done! An excellent file I can use over and over again! Thanks for posting this!
Sunday, March 15, 2009. 9:43 pm. Posted by Josh.
BracketMan - Glad you find it useful. Check back every year if you want to download the file with the teams already filled in!
Monday, March 16, 2009. 10:02 am. Posted by Terry Dell.
Nice job on the bracket!
We also have a cool, online bracket. We are running a contest with a $100 million grand prize for anyone who picks all the teams correctly this year! http://www.pickmanager.com
Good luck and enjoy the tournament!
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Josh's Edit: I don't normally edit the comments left by my readers, but in this case, I wanted to make it clear that I am in no way affiliated with the website posted in this comment by user Terry Dell.
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009. 3:39 pm. Posted by dogleg69.
Great work. Thank you for putting this together. Much appreciated by my family too.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009. 7:51 pm. Posted by Novice bracketplayer.
I am filling out a bracket online, and it will not let me save without entering a valid tie breaker. Can you help me in any way, or would it break some sort of rule???
Thank you!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009. 9:42 pm. Posted by Josh.
bracketplayer - That does not sound like my spreadsheet that you are using. My spreadsheet can not be filled out online and does not actually require you to enter a tie breaker for saving. You must be using something else.
My guess is that you are using the website in the comment above posted by Terry Dell. I am in no way affiliated with that website. If you are using it and have questions with it, please contact their support team.
Thursday, March 19, 2009. 2:18 pm. Posted by jman.
thank you a TON sir!!! this saved me so much time, well done!!!
karma in the bank for you :)
Saturday, March 21, 2009. 12:21 pm. Posted by Fred in California.
Thanks so much. My 10 year old son loves the tourney and he used this to send his picks to his cousins around the country. GREAT WORK!
Monday, March 23, 2009. 11:34 pm. Posted by PlayHardPlayFairHaveFun.
I know my family is really enjoying your application. The only sad note is that my granddaughters (age 2 and 4) are about to pass me up on the scoring. ;}
Again Thanks.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009. 6:59 pm. Posted by kristoffer.
Agree with the many other posts that this is a great spreadsheet. We came up with a twist on scoring this year, where if you predict an "upset" (lower rank team beats a higher rank team) then you get 1.5 points whereas predicting a win by the higher ranked team is worth 1.0 point. This was to encourage more bets on the underdogs. I don't see how a way to do that currently in your spreadsheet, but you have all the data needed so that would be an additional option you could throw in if others do something similar.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009. 9:28 am. Posted by Josh.
I thought about the upset bonus points this year, but didn't have time to get it into the spreadsheet. Hopefully, I can get an option for that in there by next year's tourney.
Josh
Tuesday, March 31, 2009. 9:13 pm. Posted by Rich00987.
Just wanted to say that your bracket spreadsheet in excel is awesome . It was exactly what i was looking for and took me forever to find... Now that i have yours my days of pen and paper bracket pools are over. I am a bartender and run a pool every year and your spreadsheet probably saves me about 3 hours of work all together. Wonderful job... Could not be happier-
- "not so mad in march bartender rich"
Tuesday, March 31, 2009. 9:15 pm. Posted by rich00987.
opps , commented on an economic blog....sorry.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009. 9:44 am. Posted by Josh.
No problem Rich. I moved your comments over to the appropriate article.
Thanks!
Josh
Wednesday, March 10, 2010. 12:43 am. Posted by Jon.
Great model...
I'm hosting a bracket this year and have a random scoring system. I have set points for each round win that i can set up in the scoring tab you've provided...But I am adding an underdog bonus.
Essentially, say a bracket owner predicted correctly an 11 seed beating a 6 seed in first round. I take the difference of the seeds and add 1 to the game pick (11-6=5 + 1 round win = 6 points). If a favorite is selected there is no seed difference.
Any idea how i can alter the scoring to reflect this?
Wednesday, March 10, 2010. 10:35 pm. Posted by Josh.
Jon
Funny you should mention this because this is a feature I wanted to use this year as well. In fact, I have the changes nearly done to add this feature. Check back in the next couple days for an updated sheet which adds this capability.
Sunday, March 14, 2010. 2:18 pm. Posted by Jon.
Awesome! thanks for updating the new scoring spreadsheet for upsets...
Just so I understand...on the scoring spreadsheet you have it set up below the round scores to put in values for the seed difference.
So essentially if there are 0 seed differences, (i.e. final four 1 seed plays a 1 seed, there is no bonus) then there are no bonus points. So basically i just need to re-number the right column to match the numbers on the left. (i.e. 1 seed difference equals 1 extra point, 3 seed difference equals 3 bonus points, et al...) I assume you've created this so if a 3 seed beats a 14 seed then a 6 seed that they don't receive bonus points.
Amazing Josh...thanks a ton.
Sunday, March 14, 2010. 10:23 pm. Posted by Josh.
Jon - You have it all correct.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010. 11:52 am. Posted by Sean.
Great Workbook this is exactly what I was looking for.
As far as creating a scoring sheet to keep track of the standings of everyone, I am a little stumped on the best way to achieve this. Would love to hear some suggestions. Thanks in advance.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010. 6:46 pm. Posted by Jon.
Josh,
I did some trial and error for the brackets to make sure the underdog scoring bonus works...
The following cells do not take into account the underdogs bonuses...
C-16,20,28,32,49,53,57
O-4,12,24,32,37,65
I'm going to manage those cells manually as I don't know how to fix it but wanted you to know for your brackets and anyone else who plans on utilizing Josh's awesome document he's provided for us.
If you do fix it Josh, let us know how it affects all the brackets that have been turned in from competitors. Basically, all the bracket owners already have filled in their own brackets...if you fix the master sheet and just point everyone's bracket to the fixed master...is that going to fix the glitch?
Let me know your thoughts.
Thanks again for all your hard work on this.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010. 6:55 pm. Posted by Jon.
Actually there are a lot of unknown errors. I advise that you do manual scoring....
N39....Winthrop over Louisville does count the bonus points....but if Cal or louisville were to beat Duke...it doesn't count the underdog bonus...
There are a lot of unknowns i think...
Still a great sheet...just if you do the scoring you need to be careful to score everyone's bracket correctly!
Friday, March 19, 2010. 10:09 pm. Posted by Josh.
Sean -
Sorry I couldn't help earlier, I was out of town all week. Anyway, creating standings sheet is relatively simple. After consolidating all the brackets into one file, create a new sheet within the file called Standings. Starting in cell A1 and going down column A, put the names of the people in the pool. Then for each corresponding cell in the B column, type an = sign and go to the sheet for that player and click on their score cell. Do that for each player and that's all there is to it.
Friday, March 19, 2010. 10:15 pm. Posted by Josh.
Jon -
Sorry I didn't respond sooner, I've been out of town all week. I'm not sure what the problem is that you're seeing with the bonus points. I just tested the cells you mentioned and the scenario with Cal/Lousiville beating Duke and the bonus points DID take effect.
Here's how I tested:
On the scoring sheet, I assigned 1 points for each correct answer in every round. For the bonus points, I assigned 1 bonus point for every seed difference in the table.
I went to the YourBracket tab and selected Duke to beat Ark-PB, Louisville to beat Cali, and Louisville to beat Duke. Then I filled in the same on the master bracket.
My score came out to be 5
Duke beating Ark-PB = 1 regular pt 0 bonus pts
Louisville beating Cali = 1 regular, 1 bonus
Louisville beating Duke = 1 regular, 1 bonus
Total 5 pts. It seems to be working correctly.
Are you using OpenOffice or Excel?
Sunday, March 21, 2010. 2:00 pm. Posted by Josh.
!!!BUG FIX!!!
Earlier this month, I released version 2.0 of my NCAA basketball tournament bracket spreadsheet. The v2.0 update contained the functionality to grant bonus points for correctly choosing an upset win.
Unfortunately, as Jon pointed out, there was a bug related to the bonus point calculations in the Excel version of the file. I created the sheet in OpenOffice and then exported to Excel format. Apparently one of the formulas I was using worked a little differently in OpenOffice than in Excel. I have since corrected the file and updated it to v2.1.
If you downloaded the v2.0 (Mar 12 - Mar 20, 2010) EXCEL file (OpenOffice file is fine), are currently using that file to run your 2010 pool, and are using the bonus points feature, there is a fix available to correct the issue.
Please go to this post for details on the bug and the fix.
Sorry!!
Josh
Monday, March 14, 2011. 10:22 am. Posted by Mike.
When attempting to download the 2011 xls file, I am getting a "Page Not Found". Is it the file or my computer?
Thanks!
Monday, March 14, 2011. 2:53 pm. Posted by JC.
Josh, I'm getting a 404 error when I try to select your filled in bracket (either one). The xls version of the unfilled in version seems to be Ok.
Thanks for the hard work.
Monday, March 14, 2011. 9:55 pm. Posted by Josh.
Sorry folks! I had a typo in the links for the 2011 files. I guess I should have tested those links right away, but I was in a hurry to get it posted. That'll teach me for not testing everything.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011. 10:43 am. Posted by ddubs.
Is there an issue with teh 2011 sheet? The dropdown menu to select the teams in the sheet labeled "my bracket" doesn't populate with the available teams.
Thursday, March 17, 2011. 9:30 am. Posted by Josh.
DDubs, you're correct it looks like there was an issue with the 2011 Excel file. I don't use MS Office at home, I use OpenOffice (which I highly recommend) to create/update this bracket spreadsheet. I then let OpenOffice save it as an Excel .xls file.
For whatever reason, that process went slightly wrong this year and the Excel file drop down boxes were broken. I didn't test it in Excel before uploading it because I don't have Excel installed at home. Next year, I'll have to make sure to find an Excel machine to test on before uploading.
Anyway, the problem has been corrected now. Also the blank template file did not have the problem so hopefully people were able to work around this by starting with the blank file.
Anyway, sorry for the issue!
Thursday, March 17, 2011. 11:26 am. Posted by Billquinn1.
I know I am probably just an idiot but the drop downs on the YourBracket tab contain no data. I tried copying to a new tab with same result. I unprotected the workbook and sheets with same results. I am using Office 2007. It looks like if I fill in the blank template it will work but I am lazy.
Bill
Thursday, March 17, 2011. 11:28 am. Posted by Billquinn1.
Sorry, I literally started that comment at 8:00 this morning and just finished it. I see the post above mine now. I will fill one in from scratch.
Bill
Thursday, March 17, 2011. 5:22 pm. Posted by Dawgman.
Hi, great sheet - helping me out a lot! Is there a formula that I could put into my standings sheet to calculate possible points remaining? Thanks!
Monday, March 21, 2011. 10:00 am. Posted by JWH.
Nice work on the sheet! I help manage a pool with about 148 entries. I added a standings worksheet complete with automatic links to everyone's bracket, everyone's final four teams (that turn red and crossed out when eliminated), and tie breakers. Buttons for sorting by name or by points. Turns out to be a 16 mb file when all is said and done but makes managing a ton easier!! Including a link if anyone wants to view. Keep in mind this is a 16MB file and you need to enable macros (Tools -> Macro -> security.. set to low) for standings to work.
http://s91427230.onlinehome.us/sin/ncaa2011/NCAA2011_Bracket_Master.xls
Monday, March 28, 2011. 12:24 pm. Posted by Josh.
Bill -
Glad you saw the post about the bug. It turned out to be a bug in the latest version of OpenOffice.org. I have reported it via their problem report channels and since it is open source software, I'm sure they will have it fixed in no time.
In the future, I will make sure to test the Excel version before posting.
Josh
Monday, March 28, 2011. 12:27 pm. Posted by Josh.
Dawgman -
Glad you found the sheet to be useful. I'm sure you create a formula or macro on the standings sheet to calculate the number of possible points remaining for each person. However, the calculations become somewhat complex based on your scoring method (i.e. if upset bonus points are used, etc).
Take a look at the link posted by JWH. That file contains a pretty impressive extension of my original file. It uses macros to do several calculations on the standings page.
Remember, the file I provided is donated to the public domain so you can feel free to modify it in any way you see fit!
Josh
Monday, March 28, 2011. 12:29 pm. Posted by Josh.
JWH -
That's a most impressive use of the sheet! Way to make mods so it will fit your needs. That's the best part of public domain files!
Josh
