There are so few times in life where playing the chalk is our mantra. We detest laying good money on any sure thing. Doesn't make sense. Want excitement in your love life, ask the Homecoming Queen out. Is it even money she says yes? Hell, no. Do you have a shot? If you're upright and breathing you do (might help to brush the teeth, bro). We're not talking jumping out of planes without a chute or playing the Lottery, we're talking smart plays with a risk/reward factor tagging along. But we throw that all out the door when playing our March Madness Brackets. No driving the PCH at 90, eyes closed and sans pants. No flaming shots of rum with the boss' wife at the company Christmas Party. No salads with bagged lettuce. March Madness Brackets, we are covered in chalk. What's that I hear sweeping over the meadow, coming in low but hard, put a hand to an ear and you'll hear it too. Hear it? WHAT ABOUT THE UPSETS? Yes, the upsets. Every year there are the upsets. Even your Schnauzer knows about the upsets. One Cinderella is going to make it to the Sweet Sixteen, maybe further. For the thousands of top seeds that play in the Final Four, everyone remembers Villanova in 1985. Few remember the many years the chalk made the Final Four. Why? Because it's easier to hype an underdog. George Mason made the Final Four in 2006 as an eleven seed. How many normal people (alumni don't count) had them going to the Final Four? They helped no one in their brackets because no one had them. All they did was hurt people who had the better seeds they defeated. Picking an eleven seed to go any further than the first round is suicide. Only in hindsight does it work. The reason the chalk is the way to go is that the chalk wins. They may not win every game, they may not win the tournament but they win most of the games. And if you're playing a progressive pool that places more value on each round, you need to pick winners and get as many teams in the final eight and four as possible. It is trickier with pools that value the first round more than the last... regressive pools. But the final word is you need to pick winners either way and the teams most likely to win are the chalk. Before anyone runs off and decides that picking the highest seed to win each game is what I'm saying, it isn't. The chalk for me are the top-12 teams or the top three seeds. The winner almost always is one of those three seeds. Get as many of those as you can in the Sweet Sixteen and further down the line, because to win the bracket you have to pick the winning teams and the winning teams come from the chalk. Easy enough.