It all started, Seth Burn says, with his \u201cabsolute hatred\u201d for blind-r\u00e9sum\u00e9 tests.<\/p>\n
He used to fight the urge to hurl the remote at his TV screen whenever a college basketball analyst would compare two unnamed NCAA tournament bubble teams using an incomplete, cherry-picked set of data points.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThere has to be a fairer way of selecting teams than this,\u201d Burn often thought to himself. So the professional sports gambler from Bronxville, New York, put his background in statistical analysis to use and tried to come up with one.<\/p>\n
On Feb. 1, 2015, Burn wrote a blog post<\/a> introducing a new r\u00e9sum\u00e9-based metric that he created to help objectively compare the achievements of teams that played vastly different strengths of schedules. Wins Above Bubble measures<\/a> a team\u2019s total number of victories compared to how many wins the average bubble team would be expected to rack up against the same schedule.<\/p>\n [Enter Yahoo Fantasy Bracket Mayhem now for your shot at $50K<\/a>]<\/p>\n What began with a few paragraphs on an obscure personal website more than a decade ago has since spread beyond Burn\u2019s wildest dreams. WAB has rapidly become the key metric used by the NCAA tournament selection committee to help determine which bubble teams deserve one of the last at-large spots in the field.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n When asked by reporters last month which of the seven metrics on the team sheets used by the selection committee are most important, NCAA vice president of men\u2019s basketball Dan Gavitt went out of his way to highlight WAB<\/a>, \u201cespecially when it comes to selecting teams.\u201d Gavitt said that the selection of last year\u2019s final at-large teams was more highly correlated to WAB<\/a> than it was to any other metric.<\/p>\n One high-profile example of that was the surprise inclusion of North Carolina in the 2025 NCAA tournament despite its egregious 1-12 record in Quadrant 1 games. Last year\u2019s committee took note that the Tar Heels had a higher WAB than West Virginia and Indiana, who combined for 10 Quadrant 1 wins yet were among the first teams left out.<\/p>\n \u201cWAB certainly has grown in importance in the last several years,\u201d NCAA media coordinator for March Madness David Worlock told Yahoo Sports. \u201cWhile the NET and some of the other predictive metrics are certainly helpful for the seeding process and for giving an idea of the general strength of teams, WAB actually answers the question: \u2018What have you accomplished?\u2019 That\u2019s essential to the selection process.\u201d<\/p>\n When Worlock first became aware of the Wins Above Bubble metric nearly a decade ago, he was unfamiliar with Burn. He didn\u2019t know that the inventor of WAB was an opinionated but well-respected sports bettor with a longstanding frustration about aspects of the NCAA tournament selection process that he considered unjust.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n A self-described math nerd with an encyclopedic knowledge of Syracuse basketball, Burn graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 1999 with degrees in economics, accounting and philosophy. He went on to apply his mathematical talents to analyzing data and building predictive models to find edges over bookmakers.<\/p>\n In his late-20s, Burn quit his job as an accountant because he was so successful betting on NFL point spreads and college basketball over-unders. He only returned to the corporate world a decade later when his father asked Burn to take over his accounting firm.<\/p>\n There was no financial incentive for Burn when he invented WAB.<\/p>\n \u201cI created WAB to help people understand who the most deserving teams were,\u201d he said. \u201cThis was purely to help the world see through clear eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n TEAMS ON THE BUBBLE<\/p>\n WAB<\/p>\n TEAMS ON THE BUBBLE<\/p>\n WAB<\/p>\n Miami (Ohio)<\/p>\n 2.57<\/p>\n Virginia Tech<\/p>\n .18<\/p>\n Texas A&M<\/p>\n 1.96<\/p>\n Indiana<\/p>\n .15<\/p>\n UCF<\/p>\n 1.83<\/p>\n SMU<\/p>\n .04<\/p>\n Missouri<\/p>\n 1.55<\/p>\n Stanford<\/p>\n .02<\/p>\n Santa Clara<\/p>\n 1.55<\/p>\n Cal<\/p>\n -.05<\/p>\n VCU<\/p>\n 1.06<\/p>\n New Mexico<\/p>\n -.37<\/p>\n NC State<\/p>\n .82<\/p>\n San Diego State<\/p>\n -.49<\/p>\n Texas<\/p>\n .7<\/p>\n Oklahoma<\/p>\n -.73<\/p>\n Auburn<\/p>\n .39<\/p>\n Cincinnati<\/p>\n -1.07<\/p>\n The first time Worlock remembers WAB coming up during the selection process, committee members were debating whether to include 28-win UNC Greensboro in the 2019 NCAA tournament. The Spartans had a much gaudier record than power-conference bubble teams but fewer marquee wins.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n UNC Greensboro\u2019s positive WAB was \u201clargely the reason,\u201d according to Worlock, that the Spartans initially received enough support to be the committee\u2019s final at-large team. Worlock even began preparing committee chairman Bernard Muir to defend the selection by introducing WAB to the public and explaining that the Spartans scored highly.<\/p>\n That planning went to waste when a bid thief struck the night before Selection Sunday. Oregon upset Washington in the Pac-12 title game, sending the Huskies into the at-large pool, shrinking the NCAA tournament bubble by a spot and dooming UNC Greensboro to the NIT.<\/p>\n WAB continued to gain traction in the public discourse as Bart Torvik included it on his website<\/a> and others cited it on social media. Even those bracketologists who were initially resistant to WAB had to give in after July 2024 when the men\u2019s basketball committee approved the addition of Burn\u2019s metric<\/a> on its team sheets.<\/p>\n \u201cNow that it is on the team sheets, they do have to talk about it,\u201d Burn said. \u201cAnd I smile.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n