Can AI help you build a better college basketball bracket? On March 3, 2026, SciLine interviewed Dr. Sheldon Jacobson, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
TV bundle includes:
Soundbite (SOT)
VOSOT script (can be used as-is or modified)
Raw, full-length interview video & log with timecodes (upon request via form below)
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Click for VOSOT script (can be used as-is or modified)
ANCHOR
MARCH BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTS ARE ALMOST HERE… AND SOME FANS ARE TURNING TO A-I TO FILL OUT THEIR BRACKETS.
BUT CAN IT REALLY PICK A WINNER?
VO
THE PURSUIT OF A PERFECT BRACKET HAS FANS LOOKING FOR ANY EDGE.
AND COMPUTER SCIENCE PROFESSOR… DOCTOR SHELDON JACOBSON… SAYS A-I COULD BE AN ANSWER.
HE HELPS RUN THE SITE BRACKET-ODDS-DOT-COM THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAGNE.
THE SITE USES A-I TO ANALYZE HISTORICAL TOURNAMENT DATA AND SIMULATE BRACKETS.
AND JACOBSON SAYS ONE SIMPLE STRATEGY CAN BOOST YOUR ODDS… BUILD YOUR BRACKET BACKWARDS.
SOT Duration: 1:07 Super: Dr. Sheldon Jacobson – Professor
“Sports fans look for patterns. Artificial intelligence looks for patterns, except it does it on steroids. It looks for the patterns of how teams have advanced, how the seeds have advanced through the tournament, because the tournament is a single elimination. You can be a great team, but if you have one bad game at the wrong time against the wrong opponent, you’re going to be going home. So what we’ve done is we’ve created AI-generating simulators that use these patterns and help people put together brackets. There are different types of them that we’ve put in. And the key insight that we obtained from AI, more than anything else, is that when putting together your bracket, do it from the inside out, rather than the outside in. Which means that put together your final four or your lead eight first, and then build your bracket from there. AI solved that problem for us. And when we use our AI simulators to do that, it produces very much better brackets in terms of scoring”
VO
BUT JACOBSON SAYS DON’T MISTAKE A-I FOR PERFECTION.
WITH MORE THAN 60-GAMES IN THE TOURNAMENT… THERE ARE ABOUT NINE-*QUINTILLION POSSIBLE BRACKETS.
THAT’S RIGHT… *QUINTILLION.
AND HE SAYS YOUR ACTUALLY MORE LIKELY TO WIN *BOTH THE POWERBALL AND MEGA MILLIONS JACKPOTS.
Raw, full-length interview covers:
How data and analytics help build brackets using seeding patterns and past results;
Why the odds of a perfect bracket are astronomically low;
How data-driven models evaluate team performance, seeding, and matchup probabilities; and
Common mistakes people make when filling out brackets.
