What if the NCAA Tournament winner wasn’t determined on the court, but rather by each school’s social media prowess?

For the past six years, PR agency Schwartz MSL Insights Group has provided The Social Media Power Bracket. Here’s how the firm says it determines the winners:

“Each year, we refine our methodology. This year, we looked at a school’s official athletics Facebook, Twitter and YouTube following (based on a protest from Duke last year) to see how engaged its fans are. We divided that by a school’s student population to keep it fair for the mid-majors and come up with a school’s Social Media Power Ranking.”

This year, Duke comes out on top. It is joined by Notre Dame, North Carolina, and Miami in the social media Final Four. (Notre Dame and North Carolina are considered long shots in the actual tournament).

You can see the firm's entire brackets here. 

For those who require a nerdier analysis, New York Times stats guru Nate Silver, who has correctly predicted the last couple of presidential elections nearly down to the individual voting districts, weighs in with his own picks. You can read them here, but know that they will confuse even the most studied college hoops fan.

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