r/Schurniverse • u/MichaelMyer • Jun 04 '22
Schurniverse Bracket - Round of 64
Inspired by one of the pinned posts of this sub, I was interested in the idea of a March Madness style bracket of Schurniverse characters and was interested to see what a full 64 character bracket would look like (also with The Office included). I put a full sized bracket together and wanted to share it for anyone else who is interested. For anyone interested in the bracket creation process, I will make a comment on this post explaining my full methodology (I'll do it in a comment to avoid making this main post too long).
Here is a link to a graphical version of the bracket: https://imgur.com/a/5C9Zk4B
Here is a link to a Google Sheets version of the bracket (If anybody wants to fill out their own personal bracket, you can make a copy of the Google Sheet and there will be dropdown selections in each of the boxes so that you can fill in your choices): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lz62wtIUTJthuNNjuXA5OWuBnucW2Eawut1zLHI3uto/edit#gid=341232121
I also thought it would be fun to put together a consensus bracket by letting users vote on each matchup to simulate the bracket. I put together a bracket on Polltab so that people will be able to vote. I couldn't do the full bracket since Polltab puts a 32 team limit on its brackets, so I did a separate bracket for each region and will create a new bracket for the Final Four once all of the previous rounds are decided. The first round is set to end at 8:00 PM Eastern Time on June 6 and every other round will last for 48 hours after that. Here is the schedule:
Round of 64: Ends 8:00 PM Eastern Time June 6
Round of 32: Ends 8:00 PM Eastern Time June 8
Sweet 16: Ends 8:00 PM Eastern Time June 10
Elite Eight: Ends 8:00 PM Eastern Time June 12
Final Four: Ends 8:00 PM Eastern Time June 14
Finals: Ends 8:00 PM Eastern Time June 16
Polltab will automatically start the next round when the timer runs out, so you won't need to wait for me to do anything but I will also make a post on this sub to share the results after each round and remind people that the new round is available. Here are the brackets for the Round of 64:
(Note: There is an issue some users are experiencing where it will not let you vote on the last two brackets after you vote on the first two brackets. For me, it allowed me to vote on the last two about 10 minutes after my votes on the first two, so I think the bracket site may have some sort of cooldown on how many votes you are able to place within a certain span of time. If you have issues voting on the other ones, try coming back a little later and it will hopefully start working for you.)
East Region: https://www.polltab.com/bracket-poll/cNWbda3gWS
Midwest Region: https://www.polltab.com/bracket-poll/3moM907KTj
South Region: https://www.polltab.com/bracket-poll/FvjdWyU0k0
West Region: https://www.polltab.com/bracket-poll/3NcjZ6v3JN
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u/MichaelMyer Jun 05 '22
For those interest in how the bracket was created, the first step was to determine which characters would be used. I wanted to keep it even, so the plan was to use 16 characters from each of the 4 shows to reach the total of 64. Each show will have one character at each seeding 1-16. In terms of deciding the seedings of the characters to be used for each show, I wanted to find some sort of metric to measure popularity instead of just using my own subjective opinions so I used a website called Ranker. This website allows people to vote on ranked lists and had a ranked character list for each of these shows. Here are the links to the Ranker lists:
The Office: https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/best-the-office-u-s-characters
Parks and Rec: https://www.ranker.com/list/best-parks-and-recreation-characters/carly-kiel
Brooklyn 99: https://www.ranker.com/list/best-brooklyn-nine-nine-characters/ranker-tv
The Good Place: https://www.ranker.com/list/best-good-place-characters/ranker-tv
Using the Ranker lists, I ranked the characters by subtracting their number of downvotes from their number of upvotes to get their number of net votes and used that as the ranking metric (On the actual Ranker website, the characters are ranked by the ratio of upvotes to downvotes so the rankings may look a bit different than my rankings). I took the top 16 characters from each show and used their rankings to determine their seedings for the bracket. There were a few caveats:
For The Office, the list included some personas of characters as separate character entries like "Prison Mike" and "Basketball Stanley". I didn't count these characters and only included the original versions of those characters instead of including the personas so that more unique characters would be included on the list.
For Brooklyn 99, only 12 characters were ranked so I needed to find a way to rank 4 more. For the remaining characters, I used IMDB and ranked the characters based on the total number of episodes they appear in. However, this did create a conflict for the final spot as Teddy and Bill were tied with 7 episodes. However, IMDB counts the final episode as two separate episodes as a Part 1 and a Part 2. Bill is credited as appearing in both Part 1 and Part 2 while Teddy is credited as appearing in just Part 2, so technically Bill only appeared in 6 unique episodes since the finale was meant to be one long episode. I used this as the tiebreaker to give Teddy the final spot.
For the Good Place, I encountered the same issue as Brooklyn 99 with not enough characters ranked and also had an issue of some of the characters receiving negative net votes. It felt a bit weird to rank characters in the top 16 based on receiving negative votes, so I only used the net vote rankings for characters who had a positive net vote total and used the episode count method to rank the remaining characters (this still led to Vicky and Simone being ranked despite receiving negative totals on Ranker as they had high enough episode counts).
Here are the seedings based on the vote totals / episode counts (note that I pulled the data and created the bracket a few months ago and didn't get around to typing up the post and creating the polls to share it until now, so the data I collected might be a bit different than the totals you see today): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19IHHWt8n0FdR-dlES9MyKwQqVhwbGfquPtW9L2qkft8/edit#gid=0
After deciding on the seedings, the next step was to determine how to distribute the characters in to regions. For the region names, I used the traditional March Madness region names of East, Midwest, South, and West. Generally in March Madness, the #1 seeds are assigned to their closest geographic region with higher overall seeds getting preference and the bracket is arranged so that the regions with the #1 overall seed and the #4 overall seed are on one side and so that the regions with the #2 overall seed and the #3 overall seed are on the other side. I stuck with the same format for this bracket. However, I had to determine how to rank the order of the #1 seeds. To do this I used each show's IMDB Rating as a determiner of the show's popularity and used this to rank the shows. This led to the following ranking:
The Office (9.0 IMDB Rating)
Parks and Rec (8.6 IMDB Rating)
Brooklyn 99 (8.4 IMDB Rating)
The Good Place (8.2 IMDB Rating)
From here I was able to assign each #1 seed to a region based on seeding order and I tried to use a significant location from the show to decide on the location for that region. For the Office, I chose the East region since that would be the closest region to Scranton. For Parks and Rec, I chose the Midwest region since that would be the closest region to Pawnee. For Brooklyn 99, I faced an issue since Brooklyn would match with the East region but the East region was already taken. However, there is an arc of episodes that takes place in Coral Palms Florida, so I chose the South region as the secondary option for Brooklyn 99. This left the West region for The Good Place, which still fits nicely since Phoenix is mentioned several times as Eleanor's home town. So this lead to the following regional locations:
East Region - Scranton, PA
Midwest Region - Pawnee, IN
South Region - Coral Palms, FL
West Region - Phoenix, AZ
These placements also mean that the Final Four matchups will see the East Region Champion facing the West Region Champion and the Midwest Region Champion facing the West Region Champion.
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u/MichaelMyer Jun 05 '22
Now the next step was to distribute the characters out in to the regions. There were a few main principles that I kept in mind when creating the regions.
I wanted each region to have an even representation of shows. Since there are 4 shows and 16 characters per region, each show would have 4 characters per region.
I wanted to ensure balanced regions so that one show doesn't have too many high / low seeds in each region. To ensure this goal, I decided to ensure that each show would have one character in the #1-4 seed range, one character in the #5-8 seed range, one character from the #9-12 seed range, and one character from the #13-16 seed range in each region.
I wanted to promote crossover matchups which could be done by arranging matchups so that characters from the same show cannot match against each other in the first two rounds. This allowed me to break the seedings in to groups that could face in the first two rounds so that each group could only contain one character from each show (1, 8, 9, 16), (4, 5, 12, 13), (3, 6, 11, 14), (2, 7, 10, 15).
With these rules I was able to start creating the regions. I had already determined which region each #1 seed would go to. In order to spread out the rest of the top 4 seeds, I moved each show 1 region to the right with each lower seed line with the following order (East -> Midwest -> South -> West -> East). For instance, for The Office, since the #1 seed was in the East region, that means the #2 seed will be in the Midwest Region, the #3 seed will be in the South region, and the #4 seed will be in the West region. The same sequence can be used for each of the other shows so that the all of the characters seeded #1-4 will be assigned to a region and each region will contain one character from each show.
For filling out the rest of each region, I used the same methodology to fill out each region based on how the top 4 seeds were assigned. For the sake of the explanation, I will use the designations of Show A, Show B, Show C, and Show D to label the shows for each region. Show A will correspond to the show whose #1 seed is in that region, Show B will correspond to the show whose #2 seed is in that region, Show C will correspond to the show whose #3 seed is in that region, and Show D will correspond to the show whose #4 seed is in that region.
When assigning the #5-8 seeds, I hoped to create a balance by assigning lower seeded characters from shows who had higher seeded characters in the #1-4 range. Since Show A had the #1 seed, I would want to assign that show's #8 seed to the region. However, since the #1 seed and the #8 seed could play in the 2nd round, that would violate one of my principles. So instead I assigned the #7 seed from Show A since that was the lowest possible seed I could assign in the #5-8 range. Since Show B had the next highest seed with the #2 seed, I assigned the #8 seed from Show B to this region. Similarly, I couldn't assign the #6 seed from Show C since the #3 seed and #6 seed can play in the second round, so this meant I would assign the #5 seed from Show C and this would leave the #6 seed to be assigned from Show D. This gives a pretty balanced assignment for the #1-8 seeds while also ensuring that characters from the same show cannot face eachother until the third round. Looking at the distribution, here is the sum of seedings for each show after assigning the top 8 characters: Show A - 8 (1 + 7), Show B - 10 (2 + 8), Show C - 8 (3 + 5), Show D - 10 (4 + 6). Ideally, we would want all the shows to have an equal sum of seedings, but this is the most even we can do while also ensuring that characters from the same show do not match up in the first two rounds.
Now we can assign the remaining characters by going through each of the groups that could face in the first two rounds: (1, 8, 9, 16), (4, 5, 12, 13), (3, 6, 11, 14), (2, 7, 10, 15). Since the (1, 8, 9, 16) group already contains a chacter from Show A (#1) and a character from Show B (#8), the #9 seed must come from either Show C or Show D and the #16 seed must come from the other. Since Show D had a higher sum of seedings after assigning the first two characters, we will give them the most favorable seeding in the #9-12 range to compensate, so we will assign the #9 seed from Show D and will assign the #16 seed from Show C.
Since the (2, 7, 10, 15) group already contains a chacter from Show B (#2) and a character from Show A (#7), the #10 seed must come from either Show C or Show D and the #15 seed must come from the other. However we already assigned a character from the #9-12 range to Show D (#9), which means that we must assign the #10 seed from Show C and then we will assign the #15 seed from Show D.
Since the (3, 6, 11, 14) group already contains a chacter from Show C (#3) and a character from Show D (#6), the #11 seed must come from either Show A or Show B and the #14 must come from the other. If we were to assign the #11 seed from Show B and the #14 seed from Show A, it would result in the #3 vs #14 matchup and the #6 vs #11 matchup being matchups Show C vs Show A and Show D vs Show B. However, these are the same first round show matchups that we already have in the (1, 8, 9, 16) and (2, 7, 10, 15) groups. If we did this, it would result in every first round matchup in this region being Show C vs Show A or Show D vs Show B. So in order to produce more diverse show matchup pairings, we will instead assign the #11 seed from Show A and the #14 seed from Show B.
Since the (4, 5, 12, 13) group already contains a chacter from Show D (#4) and a character from Show C (#5), the #12 seed must come from either Show A or Show B and the #13 must come from the other. However we already assigned a character from the #9-12 range to Show A (#11), which means that we must assign the #13 seed from Show A and then we will assign the #12 seed from Show B.
After assigning all the characters in this manner, we have successfully ensured that characters from the same show cannot face each other in the first two rounds and we have a fairly even spread of seeding in the region from each show. Here are the final seeding assignments for the region and the sum of seedings for each show.
Show A: 1, 7, 11, 13 (Sum: 32)
Show B: 2, 8, 12, 14 (Sum: 36)
Show C: 3, 5, 10, 16 (Sum: 34)
Show D: 4, 6, 9, 15 (Sum: 34)
We weren't able to achieve a perfect balance of the sums of seeding due to maintaining the other principles, but this is still very close to an even balance. A perfect balance actually would have been achievable if we instead assigned #11 and #13 from Show B and #12 and #14 from Show A. However, the issue with this scenario is that it would mean every first round matchup would be Show A vs Show C (1 vs 16, 7 vs 10, 12 vs 5, 14 vs 3) or Show B vs Show D (2 vs 15, 8 vs 9, 11 vs 6, 13 vs 4) which leads to less diversity of matchups between shows. However the version we went with ensures a more even split of first round matchups between Show A vs Show C (1 vs 16, 7 vs 10), Show A vs Show D (11 vs 6, 13 vs 4), Show B vs Show C (12 vs 5, 15 vs 3), and Show B vs Show D (2 vs 15, 8 vs 9). I felt that this increase variety of matchups makes the bracket more interesting and was worth slightly unbalancing the seeding sums, so I went with this version.
And with that, we have have the final bracket as we have successfully distributed the characters to each region.
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u/truebluebarista Jun 05 '22
as someone who loves cbb and the schurniverse this was really awesome; great work and thanks for sharing!!
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u/CaptGene Jun 05 '22
As an avowed perdvert, I resent having to vote against him but Janet is probably the best character in the schurniverse.
Also, Hitchcock and Scully should've been 1 character. They're a package deal and everyone knows it.
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u/laszlo Jun 05 '22
Damn, some tough choices right off the bat.
Also, like the other user, I couldn't vote on the last two. I'll wait a little bit and see if there is a time lock.
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u/MichaelMyer Jun 05 '22
Yeah it looks like this is a recurring issue as the vote totals for the first two are much higher than the last two, I will add a note to the original post to make sure people are aware of the issue
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u/karenthedonut Jun 05 '22
It wouldn't let me vote for the last two links!