The Scumbag's Guide to betting the first round of the men's NCAA tournament
Betting Christmas is nearly upon us. But unlike that one holiday with the Mariah Carey and the mistletoe, this one lasts four full days.
The opening two rounds of the NCAA tournament will drop 48 games of (mostly) high level college basketball in our laps, setting the stage for the Sweet Sixteen and granting us the opportunity to lay wagers on the Peacocks, Dukes, Hatters and, uh, Beach. That means we get to return to our resident college basketball expert, the Rhode Island Scumbag, to be our hardwood sherpa to a mountain of profitability.
When we last saw our scumbag friend, he was continuing a time-honored tradition of fading his way through the tail end of the NFL season. But like the swallows return to Capistrano, so too does he emerge as a proven money-maker each March, rewriting his narrative with the kind of basketball picks that make us forget all about that time he told us to push the Baltimore Ravens line up to -9.5 vs. the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC title game.
His picks over the first two weekends of last year’s tournament went 7-3, returning a solid six-unit return in the process. Now he’s back after processing entirely too much low-major basketball to guide us through the first round of the 2024 NCAA tournament. All text and picks below are his.