A college football fan's guide to March Madness + how to pick upsets & betting strategies
Until Saturday: A show about college football
The Athletic
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2022
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Andy and Ari return with their completely uninformed guide to March Madness (maybe this is becoming an annual tradition), as the duo discusses betting strategies in a tournament when anyone can lose at any time. Plus, the guys recall their favorite March moments and chat about how to pick upsets. Also, what happened to all the original movie ideas?
Follow Andy on Twitter: @Andy_Staples
Follow Ari on Twitter: @AriWasserman
Subscribe to The Athletic for just $1/month for 6 months by visiting: theathletic.com/andystaples
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Andy Staples show. It's that time of year again. |
| 0:12.9 | We're two idiot football writers who rarely watch men's basketball give you advice on what to do as you fill out your bracket for the NCAA tournament. |
| 0:21.7 | Ari Waserman, are you pumped? |
| 0:24.6 | How much basketball? |
| 0:25.8 | You actually, we talked about this last week. |
| 0:29.3 | You were betting conference tournaments. |
| 0:31.2 | You had what I thought sounded like a sound mathematical strategy. |
| 0:35.9 | And I wonder if it'll work for the NCAA tournament too. Yeah, everybody feels like they have a strong mathematical strategy. And I wonder if it'll work for the NCAA tournament too. |
| 0:38.6 | Yeah, everybody feels like they have a strong mathematical strategy. |
| 0:43.0 | And basically what I have been doing is doing three team money line parlayes with teams that are |
| 0:49.7 | favored in between seven and ten. |
| 0:51.9 | So like minus 250 or minus 3.30. |
| 0:55.0 | And then one of the teams out of the three is like a five point favorite. |
| 0:59.4 | And basically what I try to do is find one team that I don't want to lay the points on, |
| 1:05.2 | but I'm sure I like and I feel like they're going to win. |
| 1:08.6 | Pair them up with two heavier favorites in a three-team parlay. |
| 1:13.2 | And it basically gives you the odds of just a straight up money line bet, maybe minus |
| 1:18.4 | 110, minus 115. |
| 1:19.8 | And instead of laying five points. |
| 1:23.0 | And it worked out really, really well for me during the conference tournaments. |
| 1:26.6 | And I understand that that's probably not going to be the best strategy in March when half the games are upset. |
| 1:32.4 | So I got to come up with something new. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Athletic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Athletic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.