NCAA Basketball Expense Bracket

The bracket above (click on it or here for a larger version) for the NCAA basketball tournament comes from Forbes, which has filled it out according to filings over the past three years that each school makes with the Department of Education. Forbes explains:

Including the play-in round, the team with the higher operating expenses won in 70% of the games in last year’s tournament. If you used our system to fill out your bracket, you would have correctly picked 68.3% of the games from the round of 64 up to the Final Four. For comparison’s sake, taking the favored teams in those games would have yielded a 65% rate of correct picks. That’s not a large difference in total correct picks, but operating expenses offer a significant advantage if you want to capture those late-round points: team spending correctly predicted half of the Elite Eight and Final Four, whereas picking by the favorites predicted just three of the final eight teams and none in the Final Four.

Can you out pick the prediction made by cold, hard cash? I doubt it ;-)