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The History Department Bracket Is Here and It Has Tenure

There isn’t much turnover with these selections.
Russ Oates/SB Nation

For the last three years, I have picked the same team to win the NCAA tournament. I am selecting that same team this year. I expect to have that team as my bracket winner for several more years. Why? I select my team based on a school’s history department.

My bracket selections aren’t based on which history department is better, though. That’s too nebulous of a category to define. Rather, I prefer history departments that have scholars who write in the fields I am interested in: American foreign relations, military history, and the early American republic era. A school also gains if it has a university press that publishes books in those fields.

With low turnover rates among tenured faculty keeping departments stable for the most part, my Final Four selections don’t change much. Most of the teams that usually make it deep into the tournament also have history departments with scholars or university presses or both with which I am familiar. When a matchup doesn’t meet either of those criteria, I’ll base my pick on which department has other fields of study that I would peruse.

How does Virginia win it all?

First and foremost, Melvyn P. Leffler is the Edward Stettinius Professor of History in the department. He wrote A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. This was the book that captured my interest and led me to study the history of American foreign relations for my master’s degree. The history department at Virginia could offer nothing else of interest and I would still choose the Cavs to win the tournament because of Leffler.