Don Ventre remembers exactly what he was doing 47 years ago, on March 26^th, 1979. He was 10 years old watching Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Larry Bird go head-to-head on TV, in the NCAA Championship game. Johnson’s Michigan State team defeated Bird’s Indiana State squad, 75-64. To this day, “Magic vs Bird” is the highest rated NCAA tournament game ever.

Four years later, Ventre (known as Lou to his close friends) watched North Carolina State defeat the Houston Cougars, aka “Phi Slama Jama”, on a last-second dunk. It was the greatest championship upset in NCAA tournament history, per CBS Sports.

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“Basketball may not be my favorite sport,” Ventre says (baseball holds that honor). “But March Madness is my favorite sports event.”

He started a March Madness pool in 1990, during his senior year at Syracuse University (SU). SU knows the agony and ecstasy of March Madness. In 1987, the Orange lost the championship to Indiana by one point, 74-73, on a last-second jump shot by Keith Smart. Sixteen years later, in 2003, they won the tournament, thanks to 21 points from Carmelo Anthony and a clutch blocked shot by Hakim Warrick.

Ventre paused his pool for a couple years after college, while he lived at home in Oneonta, NY. Then he moved to Washington, DC, and the pool was back.

Just the fax

Sean Twombly remembers March Madness brackets arriving for Ventre at Twombly’s office in 1994. The brackets came via fax. Twombly was not responsible for the March Madness pool in any way. He was just a guy sharing his company’s fax machine.

The brackets would transmit onto long, unperforated sheets. “On that crazy old thermal paper that fax machines used to use,” Twombly said. “My boss got annoyed with me, but even he played in the pool.”

Twombly was single then. Today, 32 years later, he’s married with two adult kids who also participate in the pool. They all submit their brackets online these days. Twombly’s daughter is a senior at Miami (Ohio), where the basketball team won all its regular season games this year – 31 in a row – yet barely made the March Madness tournament. The New York Times calls it “one of the most contentious debates of the college basketball season.”  Many of Ventre’s college buddies are still in the pool, along with many of their adult kids (no grandkids – yet).

In the late 90’s, or maybe the early 2000’s, Ventre received an email with an unfamiliar attachment. It was Jay Guenthner’s March Madness bracket, neatly scanned and appended as a PDF file.

“I thought, what is that?” Ventre says.

Guenthner takes pride in submitting a polished bracket. He graduated from the University of North Carolina, winner of six March Madness Championships, which is tied for 3^rd-most of all time.

“It was always a pain to get him the sheet in writing,” Guenthner says. “So, I decided PDF’ing was the way to go.”

Ventre’s March Madness pool isn’t the oldest of its kind. The first one started in 1977 in a bar in Staten Island, per the Smithsonian. Ventre’s pool is not the richest; that honor belongs to Warren Buffett. Buffett offered a billion dollars to anyone who could complete a perfect March Madness bracket, meaning correctly predicting the outcome of 63 tournament games. No one claimed the prize, which is unsurprising, because the odds of picking a perfect bracket are roughly 1 in 9.2 quintillion. If you’re a hoops savant, then your odds improve to 1 in 128 billion.

Ventre’s pool isn’t the sexiest, either. Its official name is: “{Insert Year} Ventre NCAA Pool”. “I think I need a better name,” he says.

In fact, besides the switch from fax to email to online, Ventre’s pool hasn’t changed much at all in 30+ years. That’s part of its appeal. In the early 90’s, Ventre charged $6 for 1 entry and $10 for two entries. Most participants (about two-thirds) submitted 2 entries and forked over 10 bucks. That’s roughly the price you’d pay for a cheap seat at a ball game in those days.

Today, the cost of a nosebleed seat at a ball game is about 9X more expensive than it used to be. Meanwhile, the cost to play in Ventre’s March Madness pool is … unchanged. Ventre caps the number of entries at two per person, so that no one exploits the modest participation fee.

“This pool is not about gaming the system,” he says. “It’s about having fun.”

There is no limit on the number of family members who can participate. The Zeitlin clan probably holds the record, with eight. Eric and his wife Lisa Zeitlin have played for 18 years. Their two kids joined recently, plus there’s Eric’s brother Hugh, sister-in-law Carol, Uncle Jeff and dad Mark. Lisa won the pool in 2010 and Eric triumphed in 2011. “We joked that Lou would kick us out for winning in back-to-back years,” Zeitlin says.

Ventre is a benevolent pool leader, which is another reason people tend to stick around. “I like to be the guy that organizes things,” Ventre says. “I like to be the guy that makes things happen for people.”

He’s also passionate about sports. He hosts a long-running sports podcast, SLZE Sports, with Zeitlin and two other buddies.

“Those are the two best days on the entire sports calendar.” — Don Ventre, sports podcaster and pool leader, on the first Thursday and Friday of the NCAA hoops tournament,

During our phone interview, the conversation occasionally veered off topic into … more sports talk. We discussed the state of athletics at our alma matter Syracuse; the upcoming fight between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano; fantasy football; college football; and his favorite baseball team the Washington Nationals. He freely admits that he has never won his own pool. He’s won other March Madness pools, and he’s seen plenty of good — and bad — brackets in his day.

I asked for advice on how to compose a winning bracket. Ventre shared his “one gold nugget” of wisdom:

“Fill out your bracket backwards.”

In most March Madness pools, each subsequent round awards more points per correct pick. Meaning, in Ventre’s pool, a correct pick in the first round (aka Round of 64) earns 1 point. A correct pick in round two (aka Round of 32) earns 2 points. By the sixth and final round (aka the Championship), a correct pick is worth 16 points. (ESPN uses a similar formula.) Thus, filling out a bracket in reverse allows one to focus on the most valuable rounds in the pool. In other words: “Always start your bracket with who’s going to win it all,” he says. Also, many a bracket has been busted by people picking their alma mater to win regardless of their chances. No worries about that this year for Ventre or his college buddies as SU did not even make the dance this year.  And, no, there is no NIT pool for Ventre.

Who does Ventre think will win it all this year? He’s got three “tri-favorites”: Michigan, Duke, and Arizona.

Midnight for Cinderella?

In 1985, the Villanova Wildcats reached the Finals as the #8 seed. They upset the #1 seeded Georgetown Hoyas, 66-64. To this day, the Wildcats are the lowest seeded team to ever win the championship. Last season, the biggest surprise was: no surprises – at least not for the Final Four. The Final Four consisted exclusively of the #1-seeded teams. There wasn’t a Cinderella among them.

I asked Ventre if this a sign of things to come. Today, collegiate athletes can get paid handsomely by their schools. Athletes also have far more flexibility to transfer between schools than in the past. Does this mean that the wealthiest athletic programs will strengthen their hold on the most talented players, squeezing out less affluent, smaller programs?

“Maybe,” Ventre says. He expects competition to get stiffer among schools in the top conferences, because those programs have the means to recruit the best players. But he acknowledges that other teams outside of those conferences could lose out.

He listed off a few “giant killers” with potential to pull off an upset this season: #13-seed Hofstra vs #4 Alabama; #12 High Point versus #5 Wisconsin; and #12 Northern Iowa vs #5 St. John’s.

“But don’t pick too many of those longshots,” Ventre says. “I’ve been guilty of that many times.”

Ventre will fill out four brackets this season, as he does every year. He’ll enter two brackets in his own pool and the other two in his friend Alison’s pool. He will fill them out by hand, with a paper bracket and a Sharpie.

“There’s a certain Zen therapy to it,” he says.

Then, he’ll watch a lot of basketball on the first Thursday and Friday of March Madness, when all 64 teams are in action.

“Those are the two best days on the entire sports calendar.”