2011 Econbrowser NCAA tournament challenge winner

Congratulations to the University of Kentucky for winning the 2012 U.S. college men's basketball championship. Congratulations also to the 28% of those of you in our world famous Econbrowser NCAA tournament challenge who successfully predicted that Kentucky would win. The high honors go to a reader with the moniker Heteroskedastic, who correctly anticipated that Kansas would be the team Kentucky would beat in the finals, as well as picking 3 of the last 4 and 5 of the last 8 standing.

If you're both a very faithful and a very passive Econbrowser reader, for two years now you've sat on the sidelines while you watched other, equally faithful but less passive readers participate in the world-famous Econbrowser NCAA Tournament Challenge, in which brave souls pretend they can predict a significant number of the winners of the games of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. If so, here's your third chance to sit on the sidelines again, or maybe even to participate this time.

It was an exciting basketball tournament, right down to the final game. If the early rounds didn't blow a hole in your bracket, there was something wrong with your bracket! Congratulations to national champions Duke University, and to N. Noble, who had the most accurate entry in our 2010 Econbrowser NCAA Tournament Challenge. Congrats also to J. Graham, who took both second and third place in the contest.

Enough on oil prices and the Fed. I know what you've all really been waiting for is the 2012 Econbrowser NCAA tournament challenge, where you can test your skills (and luck) at predicting the outcomes of the U.S. college men's basketball tournament. All you have to do is go to the Econbrowser group at ESPN, do some minor registering to create a free ESPN account if you haven't used that site before, and make your picks for the winners of each game.

14th-seeded Harvard beat 3rd-seeded New Mexico 68-62 in the biggest upset of the NCAA Tournament so far. It's the first NCAA tournament win in the history of the school, and it comes in a year that no one expected.