It's hard to say when the fever hit, but when it did, it left him talking smack as if he were the next Dick Vitale.

Never mind he didn't know who Dick Vitale was and couldn't tell Coach K from Special K or Bobby Knight from Gladys Knight.

Even when he cheered a particular school, he didn't always get it quite right. Villanova was Villanueva and Gonzaga was Gonzalez.

All that mattered is his name was atop the March Madness company pool halfway through the NCAA Tournament - and, by golly, he was gonna win.

He didn't, but for those three weeks, like millions across the country, the Denver businessman was a college basketball fiend, glued to the TV, the online updates and the Cinderella stories that emerged with each glorious round.

"I'd definitely call it a sickness," said Jonathan Zuckerman, manager at the Champps Park Meadows, on fans such as the businessman who dive into March Madness. "We'll get people who come in here and sit and watch for six hours the first day, from beginning to end. It's basketball overload."

What makes it more compelling are the bracket pools, where everyone from blue-collar workers to baseball millionaires seemingly has a stake.

Last year, more than 3 million entries were submitted on ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge. Another 1.4 million entered their brackets on the CBSSportsLine Web site.

Some estimates have as many as 35 million people filling out brackets each year.

"And I bet most of them shoot from the hip," said ESPN bracket guru Pete Tiernan, who has been analyzing the NCAA Tournament for 17 years.

Years ago, Tiernan, marketing director for a software company in Michigan, was among those using his cursory knowledge to plod through the bracket, without much success. He figured there had to be a better way.

He put together a crude statistical database, wrote freelance articles about it, quit for eight years, then painstakingly updated his database and pitched it to ESPN.

His expertise now is touted online through BracketSci ence.com. For $20, anyone can tap into his five statistical models.

He can tell you the average No. 1 seed reaches the Final Four 40.9 percent of the time and Mike Krzyzewski-coached teams have a .276 Ability to Reach the Final Four.

He can tell you how No. 3 seeds limping into the tournament have fared and how high-scoring, veteran No. 2 seeds from power conferences have fared against No. 10 seeds in Round 2.

He can tell you scoring in the tournament is down (83 points a game 22 years ago vs. 73 last year) and that it correlates to more upsets and that younger teams are winning championships.

Though he was still crunching all the numbers late Monday night, one of his models - the Final Four/Champ rules model that is published on ESPN.com - has Florida, North Carolina, Kansas and Texas A&M in the semifinals and the Tar Heels winning it all.

Of course, he has been wrong before as past performance doesn't guarantee future results.

"The danger in knowledge is you can kind of get some preset notions," Tiernan said. "When you're in a big tourney, you've got to be contrarian and step out on a limb."

Last year, only four people in the ESPN Tournament Challenge correctly picked the Final Four. Two of those were George Mason graduates, and one mistakenly thought he was picking George Washington, not Mason.

So while Tiernan likes to see how his models stack up against the 3 million entries in ESPN's pool, he prefers entering pools no larger than 50.

"Once you get over 100 people, it's always the intern at work who knows nothing about basketball that wins," Tiernan said.

"What I'm saying is, everyone ought to expect large degrees of unpredictability. There are huge systems that predict the stock market and no one's been able to figure it out."

Dennis DeTurck, a University of Pennsylvania math professor, had a simpler approach.

"As a math guy, it's more or less like everything else; you have to be hard-nosed and unsentimental about it," he said.

That means going with the favorites because they'll typically win six of eight times in the early rounds. That translates to 24 correct picks in the first round, which sometimes is enough to win the office pool.

"It sounds trivial when you say it, but it's surprising how often people don't do that," he said.

While fans wrack their brains over the next two days, here are a few other numbers to consider:

• $3.8 billion in lost productivity because of March Madness, as estimated last year by the Chicago consulting firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

This could increase with CBS doubling its bandwidth so 300,000 people can watch video streams of games at any time. The network is offering a "Boss" button that can be hit if a supervisor is approaching. Instead of the game, an innocent-looking spreadsheet magically appears on the screen.

• $80 million wagered in Nevada on March Madness games each year. That's just a drop in the bucket of total wagers. Industry executives say Nevada gaming accounts for only about 1 1/2 percent of everything bet - legally or illegally. A CNBC sports business expert estimated $4 billion to $5 billion annually is wagered on March Madness.

Office pools are legal in Colorado as long as the organizer isn't getting a cut of the action, the state Attorney General's office said. The key is to keep the stakes modest and keep it a social event.

The NCAA, though, is wary of gambling and would prefer to send the message that money doesn't have to be involved for the games to be fun. It previously has asked FBI agents to counsel players who advance to the Sweet 16 about the dangers of gambling, the Los Angeles Times reported.

That hasn't deterred millions such as Russell Pleasant, of Omaha, who beat great odds last year when he took home $10,000 for winning the ESPN pool.

A lucky mistake paved the way, as did entering the allowable five brackets.

"I had watched George Washington play one night and thought they were a really good team and put them on my possible Cinderella list," Pleasant said in an ESPN interview.

He realized his mistake after filling out his bracket but adopted George Mason as his Cinderella anyway.

"I was a little unsure of picking them to beat UConn, but I decided to stick with it," Pleasant said.

Marta Whitsel, a project manager with IBM in Boulder, used a different strategy to win the first office pool she entered.

"Wherever I had any question at all I went with whoever had the deepest bench," said Whitsel, who won $100 in a Ross Labs pool years ago. "I figure all of them are good teams or they wouldn't be in there, but the ones that had the better benches are the ones I went with."

Her strategy shocked co-workers.

"They were all good friends, but they were sort of floored that a girl won," Whitsel said.

At least her strategy made sense.

Zuckerman remembers a pool winner four or five years ago who chose winners by which mascot was meaner.

"There's no rhyme or reason," Zuckerman said. "Some with the best basketball knowledge out there don't do anything. Sometimes they blow it apart, know it all and pick it apart, but sometimes they're at the bottom of the pile saying, 'What did I do wrong?' "

As always, they have another year to figure it out.

At least this year that Denver businessman is a little more tournament savvy. Going in, he at least knows college basketball has two halves, not four quarters.

Easiest road

In the 22-year history of the 64 (now 65)-team field, Larry Johnson, right, and Nevada-Las Vegas (1990) has had the easiest road through the brackets. It won the title facing opponents with an average seed of nine. Florida's run last year was the second- smoothest (7.7).

Toughest road

One has to go back to 1985 to find the team that took the toughest road. It was eighth-seeded Villanova, which faced six opponents with an average seed just more than three.

Bracket Dos

• Pick at least one No. 12 seed to pull a first-round upset. It has happened for six straight years and last year it happened twice: Texas A&M upset Syracuse and Montana beat Nevada. This year, don't be surprised if Old Dominion knocks off Butler, or Arkansas surprises Southern California.

• If you're picking a No. 11 seed in an upset, go with one that is high scoring. In this case, that would be Winthrop (75.3), which plays Notre Dame.

• Go with an Atlantic Coast Conference team in matchups against the Big Ten. The ACC is 28-15 in those games. Virginia Tech will try to extend that dominance against Illinois in the first round.

Bracket Don'ts

• Pick a No. 16 seed to win a game: They're 0-88. That's bad news for Jackson State, Eastern Kentucky, Central Connecticut State and the winner of the Florida A&M- Niagara play-in game.

• Pick a No. 15 seed; they've pulled off only four wins in 22 years. Will Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Weber State, Belmont or North Texas buck that trend?

• Pick a champion seeded lower than No. 4. Since 1985, only No. 8 seed Villanova (1985) and No. 6 Kansas (1988) have broken that trend. Could Louisville, a No. 6 seed, be that sleeper this year with Las Vegas odds at 40-1 to win it all?

Tracking the upsets

• George Mason's run to the Final Four last year as a No. 11 seed made a mess of brackets, but 2006 wasn't the craziest year. Four other years (1985, 1986, 1990 and 2002) saw more upsets (13). Pete Tiernan, a March Madness guru for ESPN, compiled this list of upsets since 1985. (To be an upset, a team must be seeded at least four positions higher than its opponent.)

Round Games Upset games Upsets

Round 1 704 528 93 (17.6 percent)

Round 2 352 249 64 (25.7 percent)

Sweet 16 176 111 26 (23.4 percent)

Elite Eight 88 28 5 (17.9 percent)

Final Four 44 7 2 (28.6 percent)

Final 22 5 2 (40 percent)

Bracket numbers

If you filled out a bracket sheet for every possible outcome and stacked them up, it would reach the sun 6,115 times, or the sheets would cover the surface of the Earth 158,473 times - a depth of nearly 50 feet.

• Odds of picking the Final Four: 1 in 65,536.

• Odds of picking the perfect bracket: 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

debruinl@RockyMountainNews.com

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