Only 13 teams can win the NCAA tournament. This foolproof method shows why.

Published Mar. 15, 2017 4:53 p.m. ET

Chris Chase

An empty NCAA tournament bracket is one of life's most beautiful works of art. It's blank slate brimming with possibility. When I sit in front of one, I feel like Van Gogh must have when he first set his brush to canvas - if he were five beers deep and had a dangerous overconfidence in his knowledge of starry nights.

There's so much talk about the history of the NCAA tournament and how a No. 16 has never defeated a No. 1 or how a No. 5 seed has never won the championship or how X amount of No. 1 seeds always make the Final Four. But those talks ignore the essence of the tournament. It's looking at the bracket and seeing the path of teams, the favorites who move on and the Cinderellas who make it closer to the center than anyone figured.

That's why we're looking back at the brackets themselves, devoid of regions and solely on the work of art they are and should be treated as. How do teams do when positioned on a specific line? Would you rather be the No. 1 seed on the top right or the bottom left? Where do Cinderella champions come from? Which brackets bring the most surprise winners? History isn't about East, West, Midwest or South, it's about the bracket itself. (Heck, the regions haven't even been always called that. The South used to be the Southeast and then there was those ill-fated years when the NCAA tried to convince everybody to call the regions by the regional site. Shockingly, the "we made it to Albuquerque" celebrations didn't go over well.)

We looked at every bracket in the history of the 64-team tournament to determine which bracket positions produce the most champions. It's all been a telling exercise and one that could have you tearing up your brackets (or re-clicking them) once you're finished. Could? Should. This is foolproof. (Note: Not all brackets look alike. Your bracket might have Villanova on the top right line instead of the top left. They're interchangeable that way. But for the purposes of this post, we tried to find the official bracket released by the NCAA.) Which spots win? Which spots lose? It's all below.

The place to be: The lower right. That quarter has produced the most winners, with 12. Not surprisingly, it's also the kindest to No. 1 seeds. The most top seeds from a bracket have come from there, with six.

The bigger place to be: The bottom half of the bracket. There have been 22 winners from the bottom half of the bracket, more than double the amount of winners from the top half. The bottom is also a far better place to be if you're not a No. 1 seed. Only two teams in the top half have ever won without a No. 1 alongside their name. In the bottom half, there have been just as many non-No. 1 winners (10) as there have been total winners in the top half (10).

The place not to be: The top right bracket, but especially the top right bracket if you're not the top seed. No seed other than No. 1 has ever won a title coming from that part of the bracket. And, remarkably, the only teams that have won from that No. 1 line all played in the ACC. Basically, if you're in the top-right of the bracket and aren't a top-seeded ACC team, just save yourself the heartache. This is unwelcome news in Lawrence, as the Jayhawks occupy that No. 1 spot this year. It's also bad news for Louisville (No. 2), Oregon (No. 3) and every other team in this year's Midwest.

Winners by position: Bottom right (12), Bottom left (10), Top left (5), Top right (5)

Beware the first line. I've always loved when the first team on the bracket (the No. 1 seed at the top left of the whole thing) takes a diagonal path straight to the title. But it's actually only happened three times. Those three wins by top seeds in that quarter are the fewest. The bottom left (5), the top right (5) and the bottom right (6) all have at least two more titles from No. 1s.

Positions you don't want to be in: The spots from each region from where a top-four seed hasn't won are No. 3 and 4 in top left (Baylor, and Florida this year); No. 4 in bottom left (West Virginia) and No. 2, 3 and 4 in top right (Louisville, Oregon, Purdue). The bottom right has had a winner come from each of the top four seeds. That means 10 of the 16 spots belonging to top-four seed have had a winner emerge.

How many bracket positions have produced a champion? There are 64 lines on the NCAA tournament bracket. A winner has emerged 13 of them. Of those 13 winners, five have produced just a single champion.

If history holds, who benefits in 2017? North Carolina sits in the bracket position held by the most winners (No. 1 in bottom right). We've already eliminated Kansas from the top right (not an ACC team) and Villanova is in the worst spot for a No. 1 seed by sitting in the top left (which has produced only three winners). Gonzaga, on the other hand, looks solid from its perch as the top seed on the lower left. However, the Zags were in that same position the only other team they were a No. 1 seed and ended up losing the second round to Wichita State.

But what about the median winner? We know which position has the most wins but where's the average bracket spot for a winner? By a process way too boring to explain in full, we find the median/average winner comes from the exact middle of the bracket, up in that No. 1 spot on the top right that we used to disqualify Kansas. These things aren't written in stone, obviously. Villanova was the first ever winner from the No. 2 seed in the top left last year.

What does it all mean? Pick a No. 1 seed to win. But if you don't, make sure your surprise champion is coming from the bottom half of the brackets - looking at you, UCLA.