A March Madness bracket that South Dakota State would win
It’s March Madness time — and we thought we’d run our own bracket with the top seeded teams.
Being Marketplace, we set out to crown the team with the best state economy, and not the best basketball skills.
Marketplace’s Adriene Hill has the call with help from ESPN’s Rece Davis.
Listen to the audio above to hear the story.
At the same, we also ran the brackets using a few other economic indicators.
Print out the brackets below if you’d like to fill out your guess using data from the U.S. Census or the Bureau of Labor Statistics, instead of by using superstition, mascots, or, you know, actual basketball stats:
In the unemployment matchup — the final four includes South Dakota State and Wisconsin.
The Badgers may feel like they could make it in the actual tournament; South Dakota is probably more of a long shot.
Also, of note, because the unemployment rate in Omaha, Neb., and in Columbia, Mo., are the same — Creighton and Missouri are a toss-up. You get to pick who you want to advance to the championship game. But both lose to the juggernaut Jackrabbits of South Dakota State University. Print out the unemployment bracket.
On the other hand, if the N.C.A.A. champion was determined by median household income of the surrounding area, St. Mary’s College, in Moraga, Calif., would be victorious. The East Bay area suburb has the highest household income statistics.
The high earners in some posh university towns, like Cambridge, Mass., and Berkeley, Calif., allowed those brainier schools to advance further than expected.
And Villanova advanced deep in the tournament — but that is because the household income of nearby King of Prussia, Penn., helped bump them on. Print out the bracket by median household income.
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