The economy and your wildcard

Word on the street is the Sociology department of a major midwestern university is conducting an in-depth study on the correlation between worldwide economic conditions and wildcard selection in pre-NCAA tournament pools. And while we hesitate to steal their thunder on the eve of their submission to a prominent sociological journal, we feel obligated to post our own findings here:

In early 2008, prior to the unexpected collapse of Bear Stearns, we had three (3) contestants choose illegal wildcards and four (4) who chose wildcards that failed to make the NCAA tournament field. These numbers were fairly representative of the totals for the previous five years (where we had an average of 4.4 illegal wildcards chosen and 4.2 wildcards that didn't make the field).

In 2009, with many of us tightening our belts, it became apparent that more and more of those belts were worn around their owners' heads. Again we had three (3) illegal wildcards, but the number of entrants who picked wildcards that didn't get into the bracket rose to seven (7).

This year, with two years of recession staring us in the face, the wildcard numbers have reached alarming proportions. Five (5) [EDIT: Seven (7)] contestants chose illegal wildcards (as reported previously, those five [EDIT: seven] were Richardson, L Donadio, R Kornfeld, D Kornfeld, and Hubbard [EDIT: add Bill Acchione and Durkin to this slithery collection of individual lawbreakers]), and a mind-boggling thirteen (13) of us wasted our pick on teams who probably didn't even bother to watch yesterday's numerous selection specials. In fact, our fourth and sixth most popular wildcards didn't get invited to play, as Canning, Huffnagle, Mash Leach, Pike, P Ripley, and Rybaltowski chose UConn and Karlsruher, Millan, Sakowski, and Warner took Virginia Tech. Similarly unfortunate were DaLauro (Arizona State), R Perry (Mississippi State), and Freidhof (William & Mary).

The last time it was this bad? You guessed it -- during our last economic recession in 2002, when we had a whopping eleven (11) illegal wildcards and fourteen (14) wildcard teams who watched the tournament on TV. And now that we've beaten the sociologists to the punch we've got at least a decent shot at the Nobel, right?

Some of this year's contestants apparently aren't feeling nearly as much of a pinch. Our most popular wildcard, Maryland (17 votes), is a #4 seed; and Durkin and Bill Acchione are riding high on the hog (or possibly the bear) with their selection of #3 seed Baylor. [EDIT: riding high no longer; the bear market has finally caught up to these two "businessmen."]

Top votegetters:

Maryland (17)
Xavier (12)
Northern Iowa (7)
UTEP (6)
UConn (6)
Virginia Tech (4)

Others:

Missouri (3 -- Brenner, Harlan, Madison Leach)
Cornell (2 -- Brindisi, Cohan)
Georgia Tech (2 -- D Kedson, Tester)
Siena (2 -- Broder, Packman)
Arizona State (1 -- DaLauro)
Florida (1 -- M McAtee)
Mississippi State (1 -- R Perry)
Clemson (1 -- Merril)
California (1 -- L Schlegel)
Louisville (1 -- Fitch)
William & Mary (1 -- Freidhof)