If brains were brawn, we’d be champs. We’d also get more dates. > basketball, Cornell, Sports

If brains were brawn, we’d be champs. We’d also get more dates.

by Maureen O'Connor | March 18, 2008 at 8:31 am

If brains were brawn, we'd be champs. We'd also get more dates. A confession: The current editors of IvyGate are an effete crew of muscle-atrophied weaklings. As such, we have no way of evaluating the content and/or accuracy of the Sun's NCAA basketball blog, though we find the graphic design on the top banner quite nice. (If any of your more robust Ivy Leaguers are interested in sportswriting, do drop us a line!)

Luckily, Insider Higher Ed has created the only March Madness bracket we are capable of understanding, one that pits brains vs. brains and forgets the brawn! In "A Bracket Not to Bet On" IHE crunches each team's academic stats via some complicated voodoo known as "math" (yeah, we're not too good at that, either -- thank god for the Humanities) and finds that Cornell would make it to the Final Four, if only smart points could be swapped for athlete points. And oh, what a voodoo that would be, one that I wished for daily in middle school gym class but, alas, never arrived.

A few surprises: Due to the team's (not the school's) smart points, Cornell beats Stanford straightaway, then trounces Marquette. Davidson goes further than anyone expects, and Vanderbilt drops out early.

IHE's complete academic bracket is downloadable on their website, or visible on our website, after the jump.

If brains were brawn, we'd be champs. We'd also get more dates.

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4 Responses to “If brains were brawn, we’d be champs. We’d also get more dates.”

Uncle Toby Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Ouch. The Ivy rep doesn’t even win? For shame, for shame.
Redrum Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 11:47 am
The APR and GSR are faulty. They fail to take into account the strength of academic programs, overall academic competitiveness, grade inflation, penalize for extra semesters taken to complete a degree, time taken off or taken as part time enrollment from school by choice. A very important penalty is also made against (very athletically successful schools’) students who decide to leave before graduation, including athletes that leave to enter the pros and even seniors who decide to use their last semester preparing for workouts for million dollar contracts. It’s not an entirely crap system it is just that politics have created some of the flaws.
CU08 Says:
March 25th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
That Davidson pick is looking pretty good right now
haitian-sensation Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
I take offense, that is, to the use of the word voodoo, for, it would suggest there something to this hocus pocus.