Michigan and March Madness have a long and complicated relationship. In some years, everyone goes home happy with an in-state university cutting down the nets before One Shining Moment kicks in. In other years, it isn’t so pretty.
When it comes to showcasing talent during March Madness, few schools have been as successful as the Michigan Wolverines and the Michigan State Spartans. Both of these teams have brung their fair share of elation as they’ve made runs to the Final Four. They’ve also been responsible for their fair share of busted brackets with early departures.
It’s not just the teams that have been memorable, either. Michigan has has several collegiate players step up and create amazing moments for fans to talk about years or decades later. Glen Rice, Jalen Rose, Chris Webber, Trey Burke, Mo Wagner, Magic Johnson, Mateen Cleaves, Draymond Green, and Denzel Valentine will be names fans will likely always remember.
Should you advance the Spartans or Wolverines to the Final Four in your bracket this year? Should you bet it all on bracket contests or futures bets? Our March Madness bracket guide will help your betting strategies and help you understand your best options when it comes to March Madness betting in Michigan.
There are a ton of March Madness contests you can enter out there and a lot of them don’t charge a fee. But which ones are the best? Here are our four favorites in Michigan.
This contest, which is known for having a $250,000 prize pool, is free to join. If you end up with the top bracket, you could pocket an astounding $100,000 for your trouble.
It’s completely free and open to residents across the United States. You just have to register for a free account at FanDuel online sportsbook and fill out your bracket before the first tipoff.
Would you expect anything less from a company that has taken sports betting by storm? The entire country can take a shot at winning DraftKings Sportsbook’s free March Madness contest, and you can win some decent money if you are one of the top contestants. A couple of years ago, the prize pool was $64,000. Expect that to rise even higher in 2021
Yahoo Best Bracket Millionaire: Yes, Yahoo is still a thing, and Yahoo Sports is one of its main properties. Every year, it offers a free-to-enter bracket contest, and the winner walks away with $1 million. You make your picks, and if you’re the best there is, you get an actual lump-sum check of $1 million. There is no reason not to enter — it’s free! Just remember that there is only a single prize awarded.
ESPN Tournament Challenge: Obviously ESPN is the big name when it comes to sports, so it really shouldn’t be very shocking that it has its own tournament contest. The rewards for the free challenge are much smaller than those above, valued around $25,000 — and none of it is cash prizes. You might see a trip to Hawaii, or gift cards, or even ESPN+ subscriptions.
While the whole point of being involved in an NCAA Tournament bracket challenge is for the fun of it, there’s always something special about walking away with some money in your pocket. Plus, the bragging rights are always nice.
So how do you get paid if you do well in a March Madness contest at a Michigan sportsbook?
The first thing to remember is every sportsbook has its own set of rules, and you can always find them under the terms and conditions of any contest you enter. In there, you’ll find the specific rules for the sportsbook you’re using.
Typically, the way brackets work is on a points system. The first-round games are worth a certain amount of points — let’s say five points as an example for each correct selection — and those points go up with each round. So 10 points for every correct selection in the second round, 15 in the Sweet 16, 20 in the Elite Eight and 25 in the Final Four. The winning selection is usually worth a solid number of points, and there is usually a tie-breaker (typically the final score of the national title game) in case that situation arises.
But, as we mentioned above, each sportsbook is going to have its own rules and scoring system, and you should always read the terms and conditions before participating.
When you do make some money, you’ll have the ability to withdraw your winnings from your online sportsbook account if you wish. To do so, you’ll have to select a withdrawal method, which ranges from direct deposit into a bank account to PayPal to a physical check in the mail. Different sportsbooks may have slightly different deposit and withdrawal methods, so make sure you are aware of those before participating in any free March Madness contests.
Depending on which online sportsbook or sports betting app you choose to use in the Great Lakes State, you’ll find varying sign-up procedures. Thankfully, the general process is the same across the board.
When you open up the app you’ve chosen to go with, you’ll see the option to register or sign up. Click that, and you’ll be taken to a page that requires you to enter personal information such as:
You’ll have to agree to the terms and conditions, and once you’re through all of those steps, you’ll be able to make a deposit into your account. Then you can start wagering.
When it comes to March Madness, everyone has their own strategy for picking their winners. In your office pool, you might have a coworker who picks based on which mascot would win in a fight. Some people make their picks by letting their dog choose.
We don’t recommend those particular approaches. But we do have three essential tips for your March Madness selections.
Building a great bracket takes more than just a solid strategy and luck — you also have to avoid the pitfalls, too.
Here are our three top picks for March Madness mistakes you don’t want to make.
That’s the way it goes sometimes, and you just have to accept that. Of course, you might be able to enter a contest that has a second-chance option.
Some sportsbooks and other March Madness contest organizers allow for you to put together another bracket, typically starting with the Sweet 16 teams and choosing which teams will advance. Sure, that really narrows the field and it isn’t going to have the same kind of prize pool as your original bracket, but it’s nice to have an option to help keep you in the running.
Brackets get busted. Top teams lose. A second-chance bracket lets you stay in the game and, in some cases, redeem yourself if you made a few too many bad choices.
Companies like ESPN, CBS Sports, and FOX Sports all usually have second-chance brackets as the tournament progresses in March.
When it comes to the NCAA Tournament, there is more than one way a team can earn a berth to the big dance. The first, and most reliable, is to win the conference tournament. There are 32 conferences that each crown a champion at the end of a postseason tournament. That champion receives an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
The other 36 teams that need to be selected are done so by a committee, which reveals its choices on Selection Sunday prior to the start of the March Madness tournament. Those at-large bids are determined based on overall performances and strong showings against other tournament-bound teams.
To get from the 68 teams chosen to the field of 64 for the first round, the bottom eight teams compete in four play-in games (called the First Four), with the winners advancing.
All of those teams are seeded No. 1 through No. 16 in each region (there are four regions, mostly based on geographical locations of the schools), and they are paired to play against one another. Since it’s a single-elimination tournament, a team that loses goes home. A team that wins advances to the next round against a new opponent.
As teams are eliminated, the best climb through the ranks to the Sweet 16, Elite Eight, Final Four, and, finally, the national championship.
It won’t be until March when we know which teams will be playing in the NCAA Tournament, so we can’t give you a full schedule at this point. What we can do is give you the breakdown of when milestone events will take place during March Madness 2021.
When it comes to online sportsbooks in Michigan, you’ll be able to find yourself both free and paid March Madness contests to join plus individual game lines and props on every single game.
Which is the better proposition for making some money on March Madness? Here are a few pros and cons of betting on brackets in comparison to betting on single games during the tournament.
When it comes to placing bets on single games during the NCAA Division I Men’s College Basketball Tournament, you have plenty of options, especially when using legal and regulated sportsbooks here in Michigan.
The main bet types you’ll be considering are the moneyline, point spreads and totals (also known as over/under bets).
For a moneyline bet, you have to choose between the two teams which you think will win the game. Simple as that. It’s the easiest kind of bet to make with the least amount of extra consideration involved. It doesn’t matter if a win is by one point or 100, all that matters is the team you pick wins the game.
Teams with negative odds are the favorites, while teams with positive odds are the underdogs.
If you bet on the Michigan State Spartans to win, you’d have to place a $110 bet to win $100 if the Spartans are victorious. If you choose Georgetown, every $100 you bet stands to win you $160 in profit if the Hoyas win.
For point spreads, oddsmakers will give you a game and the number of points a team is expected to win or lose by. Your challenge is to choose the correct outcome, taking that spread into consideration.
The sportsbook has determined that Marquette is the favorite in this game to the tune of 13.5 points. With that being the case, Marquette would need to win the game by 14 points or more for your bet on them to win. A bet on Oakland, meanwhile, means that team would need to lose by 13 points or fewer or win the game outright in order for you to collect.
The third of the main bet types is the totals bet, also known as an over/under bet. Oddsmakers will determine how many points they think the two teams in a single game will score combined, and your decision to make is if you think the combined final score will be over or under what the oddsmakers have listed. It doesn’t matter who wins, just that the combined point total is over or under the projection.
Here’s an example of a game between Michigan and Duke.
The sportsbook has put the total score at 135.5 points (yes, half-points are impossible, but this ensures the game won’t land exactly on a number and thus cause a push).
If you think Duke and Michigan can combine for 136 points or more, then you’d bet on the over. If you think the defenses will prevent the game from getting more than 135 combined points, then you’d bet the under.
AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File
Brackets cannot be completed until after Selection Sunday announcements are made — which are next slated for March 14, 2021 — but you can find brackets to be filled out pretty much immediately afterward.
It all depends on which contest you have entered, but the way it typically works is each round’s games are worth a certain number of points, and each correct choice in that round gives you that many points. Those points are added up, and a winner is determined by the total points. In the case of a tie, the usual tie-breaker is the final score of the national championship game. But keep in mind that each contest has its own rules, and you should familiarize yourself with them prior to participating.
That depends on which sportsbook or website contests you are entering. Some will limit your number of entries, and some will allow you to enter as many times as you want. You can also enter in multiple contests at multiple locations if you wish. The real question is, how many brackets do you want to enter?
There are a lot of ways for March Madness brackets to go off the rails, but once you see the math on the number of possible combinations for a single bracket, you’ll probably understand why. This math is based on if every team had an exact 50% chance to win any game. Since there are 63 games in a bracket, each with two potential outcomes, that would mean 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 possible combinations.
If you picked up a bracket and just randomly filled it out, you’d have a one in 9.2 quintillion chance of having a perfect bracket. Since few bettors actually just choose winning teams at random, the odds, according to DePaul University math professor Jeff Bergen, are closer to one in 128 billion.
The American Gaming Association estimates there are over 70 million NCAA Tournament brackets filled out each March.