It’s All Fun and Games: NCAA Tournament+ Team Scramble Auction Draft
- sedlecky0
- Dec 23, 2022
- 7 min read
No matter what hobbies and interests keep the wheels in our heads spinning and entice us to invest fathomless amounts of our time and energy, there always seem to be opportunities to go just a bit further. Fancy yourself a long-distance runner? Try running a marathon in every state, like my dear aunt accomplished. Enjoy getting out in nature and birdwatching? Challenge your friends to see who can accumulate a longer list of “lifers” next year. Can’t see enough of the world to quench your thirst for wanderlust? Plan a trip down to Antarctica, like an uncle of mine ventured off on a few years back. Maybe you’re a fear-loving daredevil? See if you can top Alex Honnold’s 2,900-foot free solo climb (with no safety mechanisms in place whatsoever) up the vertical face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, as featured in the 2019 Best Feature Documentary Oscar winning film Free Solo. On second thought, maybe don’t try that last one. But do watch the movie, and then, if you didn’t pass out watching Free Solo, do yourself a favor and follow it up with the equally stunning 2021 documentary The Alpinist. Pardon my digression.
For those of us who are college basketball junkies, watching the fireworks of the game play out on the court is plenty thrilling, but who doesn’t love to add a little juice by throwing in some competition from the couch?
In this series, I will introduce different games and competitions I’ve participated in beyond the tradition of filling out a bracket before the NCAA Tournament in March, and usually with a bit less luck involved than that too.
Today, just in time for your holiday parties, we’ll be focusing on an NCAA Tournament+ Team Scramble Auction Draft (the name of the game, clearly, is still being workshopped, so let me know if you have any clever naming conventions). Much like a Calcutta auction that is popular to play for major golf tournaments, horse races, or college basketball, this NCAA Tournament+ Team Scramble Auction Draft’s basic premise is to amass teams that you expect to have long and successful runs in the NCAA Tournament.
But there are some twists. First, in this version of the game, packages of four randomly selected teams are auctioned off on a rolling basis as opposed to one team being sold at a time. With 363 teams officially competing in Division 1 Basketball this year (and hypothetically eligible for postseason play, though a few teams every year are generally not so), this year’s draft consisted of 90 packages of four teams and a 91st package consisting of just three teams.
Because teams are packaged together and then auctioned off in real time as opposed to each package being determined in advance of the draft, the expected values of each package will vary wildly, adding to the strategy and intrigue of the live auction event.
The competition stakes of this game can be developed in whichever manner you and your friends would like, and team point accumulation can be heavily modified as well, but here are the basic parameters of the NCAA Tournament+ Team Scramble Auction Draft I participated in this year:
Participants: 10
Buy-in: $72 (to be distributed to charity)
Team Budget: $300 in play money
Pay-outs:
NCAA Tournament Bid......................................................................64 teams, $2.75 per team
Round of 32 Appearance...................................................................32 teams, $3.75 per team
Sweet 16 Appearance...........................................................................16 teams, $5.50 per team
Elite 8 Appearance................................................................................8 teams, $10.00 per team
Final Four Appearance.......................................................................4 teams, $18.00 per team
Championship Game Appearance...........................................2 teams, $34.00 per team
NCAA Tournament Champion...............................................................................1 team, $70.00
NIT winner.............................................................................................................................1 team, $10.00
Player with most NCAA Tournament teams...................................................$10.00 bonus
CIB Tournament winner................................................................................................1 team, $5.00
NCAA Women’s Tournament Champion..........................................................1 team, $5.00
NCAA Tournament play-in game losers....................................4 teams, $1.50 per team
CIT winner...............................................................................................................................1 team, $5.00
Team that suffers the biggest Tournament loss............................................$5.00 bonus
With that in mind, you can take a look at the results of our draft this year (which took place on December 10) on this Google Doc.
So, What’s the Strategy?
As with many fantasy-style games, there are a variety of strategies that participants employ, with varying degrees of success (or, at least, expected levels of success). Generally speaking, the most basic strategy is to spend more money on packages that contain teams expected to make – and do well in – the NCAA Tournament. The ancillary bonus winnings are not enough to impact strategy in my opinion, so this year, the packages with Purdue, Houston, UConn, Tennessee, Kansas, UCLA, Alabama, etc. should have gone for the highest values, and that more or less played out. Here are the 10 most expensive packages that sold:
1. Package 16 ($230) – Virginia Military Institute, Illinois, Tennessee-Martin, Virginia
2. Package 67 ($225) – Washington St., Montana, Houston, Gonzaga
3. Package 79 ($214) – Alabama, Saint Joseph's, Duquesne, San Diego St.
4. Package 69 ($171) – Troy, Iowa, Michigan, Texas
5. Package 47 ($163) – Davidson, Purdue, Saint Louis, Penn State
6. Package 72 ($135) – UTEP, Alabama A&M, Toledo, Kansas
7. Package 26 ($120) – Vermont, Tennessee, Georgia Tech, Texas Tech
8. Package 8 ($117) – Memphis, Binghamton, Siena, UConn
9. Package 90 ($109) – UMBC, Richmond, Kentucky, Old Dominion
10. Package 23 ($100) – Northern Colorado, BYU, Denver, Duke
Five of these packages went for more than half of the winner’s budget, and all 10 went for at least one-third of a starting budget, but it’s highly likely that at least a couple of these packages will actually return positive ROIs. In order to determine ROI, of course, all you have to do is convert play dollars to actual buy-in cost ($300/$72, or about $4.17 in play dollars to equal one real, charitable dollar), and then divide money won by cost of buy-in.
If Houston wins the NCAA Tournament and Gonzaga makes the Elite Eight, for example (a not unlikely scenario in my book), while Washington State and Montana both miss the Tournament, Package 67 will return $166 to Mason for a real-dollar investment of just $48.21, good for a 344% ROI and a happy surprise for the charity of Mason’s choosing.
Another rather enticing strategy is to load up on as many cheap packages as possible in hopes of stealing an overlooked team or two and/or getting lucky with a surprise NCAA Tournament run, like Brian did in snagging 2022’s Cinderella Saint Peter’s Peacocks in last year’s auction (doubly lucky in this case, as Saint Peter’s was part of a $23 package along with Oregon and Arizona State, neither of whom made the Tournament).
This year, using my Expected Value calculations (special thanks to KenPom, as always, and Joe Cook at www.131sports.com), I projected that 25 of the 91 auctioned team groupings will return less than $1 in expected value, and 43 packages went for less than $10 worth of play money (Ryan having amassed the most, with nine). It’s unlikely that any of those packages will return a significant amount of money, but grabbing as many teams as possible and joining Team Chaos is certainly one way to play the game!
Ultimately, however, the name of the game is to spend all your play money, identify teams you think are better than the general consensus and spend the money to purchase them, and have some fun with it!
Bang for the Buck
Now that this year’s auction is in the books, we can take a look at team packages that sold for significantly more or less money than I believe they should have based on my Expected Value calculations. Because of how early in the season our draft takes place, these expected values should be a lot less precise than if you decide to draft in the middle of February, but it’s a fun exercise either way. With just one exception, these best and worst value plays are only for packages that sold for $10 or more, as the cheaper packages should hypothetically return very little across the board.
Steals of the Draft
Starting with the best expected ROI, here are the packages that I think sold for way too little:
1. Package 84 (Gabe) – Ohio State, Dayton, Lehigh. Sacred Heart
Cost - $20; Expected Return in play money - $45.12 (125.6% ROI)
2. Package 51 (Sam) – Oklahoma State, Gardner-Webb, Samford, Seton Hall
Cost - $13; Expected Return in play money - $28.57 (119.8% ROI)
3. Package 53 (Paul) – William & Mary, The Citadel, Arizona State, Tennessee Tech
Cost - $10; Expected Return in play money - $21.05 (110.5% ROI)
4. Package 73 (Sam) – Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Central Connecticut St., Utah State
Cost - $31; Expected Return in play money - $63.66 (105.36% ROI)
5. Package 68 (Sam) – St. Mary’s, Sacramento State, Santa Clara, Merrimack
Cost - $22; Expected Return in play money - $41.99 (90.9% ROI)
6. Package 88 (Gabe) – Western Illinois, UNC-Wilmington, Drake, Arizona
Cost - $39; Expected Return in play money - $70.22 (80.1% ROI)
7. Package 61 (Sam) – Colorado, Boise State, McNeese St., New Hampshire
Cost - $5; Expected Return in play money - $20.51 (310.2%! ROI)
What Were They Thinking?
Starting with the lowest expected ROI, here are the packages that I believe were most overvalued:
1. Package 89 (Paul) – Kennesaw State, Wright State, Weber State, Harvard
Cost - $38; Expected Return in play money - $2.69 (-92.9% ROI)
2. Package 38 (Rey) – Quinnipiac, UC-Davis, Fairfield, University of Southern California
Cost - $10; Expected Return in play money - $2.88 (-71.2% ROI)
3. Package 41 (Rey) – Maryland-Eastern Shore, Murray State, UC-Santa Barbara, Queens
Cost - $13; Expected Return in play money - $4.05 (-68.9% ROI)
4. Package 90 (Gabe) – Howard, NJIT, TCU, Washington
Cost - $38; Expected Return in play money - $12.63 (-66.8% ROI)
5. Package 48 (Paul) – Valparaiso, Evansville, Michigan State, Holy Cross
Cost - $32; Expected Return in play money - $12.93 (-59.6% ROI)
6. Package 11 (Ryan) – Clemson, Princeton, Oral Roberts, Hawaii
Cost - $30; Expected Return in play money - $12.57 (-58.1% ROI)
7. Package 7 (Gabe) – Kansas State, Middle Tennessee St., Nevada, Minnesota
Cost - $36; Expected Return in play money - $15.70 (-56.4% ROI)
8. Package 79 (David) - San Diego St., Alabama, Saint Joseph's, Duquesne
Cost - $214; Expected Return in play money - $107.36 (-49.8% ROI)
9. Package 72 (Rey) – Kansas, UTEP, Alabama A&M, Toledo
Cost - $135; Expected Return in play money - $69.50 (-48.5% ROI)
Both of these lists should of course be taken with some major caveats, first and foremost among them that I will always have my packages ranked as better value buys because I am using my own calculations to make my picks in the first place; I finished about middle of the pack last year and very well may again this season. Second, because of how early this draft took place as noted above, there is ample time for teams to move up and down the ranks, and we’ve already started to see some major movement in that regard, with Illinois dropping a home game to Penn State in the midst of our draft and then getting pounded by Missouri last night while UCLA has picked up a couple top-tier wins in the past two weeks and is now looking like a terrific value play for Kevin, going for $77 along with stinkers Louisiana Tech, Columbia, and Southern Miss.
Regardless, at the end of the season, we play the game to benefit our favorite charities and to have yet one more reason to root a little too hard for a team we know nothing about (C’MON SAMFORD!) while enjoying our favorite beverages in the warmth of our houses while the wind howls outside like today.
I hope you all enjoy a wonderful holiday season, and best of luck in your own NCAA Tournament+ Team Scramble Auction Drafts!
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