THE YEAR WITHOUT BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTS.

It's a wonderful opportunity to engage in what-ifs. ESPN's BPI projects Wisconsin as would-be NCAA champ.

Their simulation, which considers "the relative strength of the two teams and the location of the game" for every single game in the bracket predicted that...Badger fans, brace yourselves....WISCONSIN could have been crowned NCAA champions, beating out No. 6 BYU for the rights to hang a banner in the Kohl Center.

ESPN's Seth Walder, who put this exercise together, explained in his article that normally, BPI is used to provide probabilities of multiple scenarios.

But here's the thing," Walder wrote. "Life is a single sim. The 2020 tournament was only going to be played once. And so that's what this article is actually dedicated to: a solitary simulation of this year's tournament. One-and-done, just like March Madness."

As we've noted in other contexts, a single simulation ought be considered only as guidance.  I wonder, however, if there haven't been all sorts of impromptu simulations going on.  Instead of the statistician's room full of monkeys, isn't there a country full of players of the various video games with, at the moment, probably lots of time to fill?  What would the frequency count of hypothetical brackets, hypothetical pairings, what have you, yield?