Dr. Jay's NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT POOL Past Winners

This page highlights the rich history of the NCAA Tournament Pool, now in its third decade of existence. The pool began in 1989 at the University of Iowa Physics Department. The head coach of the Hawkeyes was Tom Davis, and he had the Men's Basketball program in the NCAA tournament nearly every year. Not only that, but he and his teams had a perfect record in first-round games. There was great interest in March Madness on the campus in Iowa City as the snow melted and graduate student Rick Dyson rallied the others in the Physics Department who might make their bold projections about the outcome of the tournament each spring.

In 1994, upon my return to Iowa for graduate school in the Physics Department, I entered the pool as I had done as an undergrad. Rick informed me that his impending graduation and hiring as a researcher in the department left him no choice but to pass the torch to a new graduate student, whose status as a non-employee would not be jeopardized by the appearance of wrong-doing, gambling, and misuse of state funds and time. I happily accepted the task of running the pool for the next 7 years as a Ph.D. student at the University of Iowa. Rick's only request, that the original rules not be amended, and that the one person who had been forever barred from entering the pool, Glen Fessenden, still be forbidden from entering.

From the archives, click HERE for the original 1993 form of the rules, when they were handed down to me from Rick Dyson in 1994.

In 2001, when I finished my degree, and moved to Normal, IL to start work at Illinois State University, the pool came with me. In my first two years at Illinois State, I did not run the pool, as I had a lot of adjustment to the new job, school, town, and life. But the respite was brief, and in the spring of 2003, March Madness re-emerged from its cocoon, reborn into a new and better pool. Quantum leaps in technology, email, the WWW, and NCAA Office Pool software have allowed this once simple beast to grow and evolve into the titan it has become today.

My detailed records date back to 1997. Browse the list of heroes, heroines, longshots, and underdogs. Share in their glory, feel the agony of those edged out at the end, revel in the joy of coming from behind after 3 rounds at the bottom of the standings, to take the lead and win with the tiebreaker score after the championship game. Behold, below, the pantheon of successes that are Dr. Jay's NCAA Tournament Pool Winners: