SALT LAKE CITY -- Conventional wisdom says you should pick Kentucky to win the NCAA Tournament. Last time I checked, Kentucky was the overwhelming favorite among fans on ESPN, with nearly 1 in 3 brackets naming the Wildcats as eventual champions. Kentucky has been stupendous this year, rattling off a 32-2 record and looking practically invincible in the process.

However, if the Wildcats are the odds-on favorite, don’t tell that to the three other No. 1 seeds. North Carolina is getting 15 percent of the votes for eventual champion, Syracuse trails slightly with 11.2 percent, and Michigan State is tabbed by 6.7 percent of the thousands of amateur bracketologists making their picks.

If you’re feeling a bit rebellious, maybe Missouri is the team for you. The 30-4 Tigers just smoked Baylor en route to the Big 12 tournament title, and many Tigers fans feel the SEC-bound hotshots deserved a No. 1 seed.

Yet, here I am with BYU sitting at the top of my bracket. I might argue there are plenty of reasons for BYU fans to be optimistic. The Cougars join Kansas as the only teams to win 25 or more games in each of the past five years, and BYU is one of just 11 teams to make six (or more) consecutive appearances. Sure, Gonzaga crushed BYU twice in the past few weeks, but Noah Hartsock is healthier now. The Cougars tasted tourney success in 2010 and 2011, so why not this year?

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Still, for every argument I make, there’s a mountain of evidence to suggest my bracket is doomed. ESPN’s resident bracketologist Joe Lunardi said BYU’s 14 seed “is the worst at-large seed I can ever recall.” Hardly inspiring. Moreover, he may be right about BYU facing an uphill battle to prove me right. After all, no 14 seed has ever won the tournament, and the Cougars have to face off against a potent Iona Gaels squad before the main festivities even begin. What’s more, for all their recent success, BYU’s overall NCAA Tournament record is hardly inspiring.

I may be mad, but aren’t all of us for even attempting to pick a perfect bracket?

The odds of picking the perfect NCAA Tournament bracket are small, astronomically small. In fact, DePaul University professor Jeff Bergen says the odds are 1 in 9.2 quintillion (that’s a 9 with 18 zeros behind it) that you’ll pick every single matchup correctly. (Incidentally, the BYU women play DePaul in the first round of the women’s NCAA Tournament on Saturday.)

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NCAA Tournament 2012

Check out the NCAA Tournament brackets, team matchups and your favorite team's road to the final four.

However, what if you know some tried-and-true facts? For instance, the No. 1 seed has never lost in the first round (108-0 and counting). No team seeded 12 or worse has ever made the Final Four (VCU’s run last year began as a No. 11 seed). In that case, your odds skyrocket to 1 in 128 billion. Bergen says that’s the equivalent of every single person in America filling out a bracket, with less than a one-fourth of 1 percent chance that anyone in the U.S. will get a perfect bracket.

Of course, there are many tried-and-true strategies for being a perfect prognosticator. For example, team color. Teams wearing blue (or blue and white) are more likely to win than any other color or color combination. Last year is the perfect example, when five of the eight teams to advance that far wore variations of blue.

You can also play the name game. Consider that in the past 10 years, six national titles were won by coaches named Bill (or Billy) or Jim. Since 1985, coaches named Dave have posted a 17-15 record in the first round and a 1-1 mark in play-in games. Odds are looking good for Dave Rose and first-year UNLV coach Dave Rice, Rose’s former assistant, to advance in the tournament.

Prefer mascots? In that case, bet on four-legged animals. Gators, huskies and terrapins have won half of the titles since 2002. Avoid devils and fruit.

Don’t be too fond of rankings and records. Three of the past 10 tourney champions — including last year’s winner UConn — were unranked in the preseason AP poll. The final AP/Coaches No. 1 ranked team hasn’t won the NCAA Tournament since Duke in 2001.

What’s more, don’t go for unblemished Cinderellas. Three of the past 10 winners had four losses at the start of the tournament, three had five, and two title teams had six losses when March Madness began. In fact, the last time a perfect team entered — and won — the NCAA Tournament was Indiana in 1976.

This year, an estimated 45 percent of Americans will strive to pick the perfect combination. However, no matter how conventional or unconventional your strategy is, your bracket is going to be just as busted and broken as mine is by the time April rolls around. “When your bracket goes down the tubes, don’t worry. So is everyone else’s,” consoled Bergen.

So go ahead! Pick BYU as your bracket king. It’s probably sheer folly, insanity, even madness. But after all, this is March, and the Cougars are dancing again.

David Gale is a BYU graduate and former television news producer. Compare your bracket to his at planetbyu.com. You can also follow him on twitter @planetbyu.

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