2025 March Madness bracket: Duke, Florida headline most popular picks to win NCAA Tournament

Nearly half of all CBS Sports bracket entries were submitted with Duke or Florida as the title winner

By Kyle Boone

Mar 20, 2025 at 1:49 pm ET • 1 min read

The 2025 NCAA Tournament is up and running, and the results are in: Duke and Florida -- in that order -- are the most popular picks to take home the national championship. CBS Sports' bracket games officially locked Thursday with the start of the First Round, and the No. 1-seeded Blue Devils were the only team to earn more than 25% of picks to win the title.

Florida, the second-most picked team, was the only other team to reach a 20% threshold.

Unsurprisingly, the No. 1 seeds accounted for the four most-picked title-winners -- but in an order that may surprise. No. 1 overall seed Auburn was the third-most picked at just 15.11% and the final No. 1 seed, Houston, which was the third overall No. 1 seed according to the committee, came in at 10.08%.

Here's a look at the ten most-picked teams and the percentage of brackets that had each as their national champion.

Seed	Team	Pick %
1	Duke	27.21%
1	Florida	21.52%
1	Auburn	15.11%
1	Houston	10.08%
2	St. John's	4.17%
2	Michigan State	4.06%
2	Tennessee	3.13%
2	Alabama	2.93%
3	Kentucky	1.34%
3	Wisconsin	1.16%

St. John's, the selection committee's lowest-ranked No. 2 seed, finished as the most-picked No. 2 seed to win the title. Kentucky, the third-lowest No. 3 seed per the committee's seed list, was the most-picked No. 3 seed.

The SEC had two of the four most-picked teams in Florida and Auburn and accounted for 45.06% of all predicted champions in CBS Sports brackets as well. That nearly doubled the ACC, more than tripled the Big 12 and was nearly six times more than entries predicting a winner from the Big Ten.