Most of my opinions are going to be structural rather than looking at rosters or individual matches.
Single Elimination
I just don't think this is a good format anymore. Ever noticed how the whining along the lines of "Link always wins" or whatever always gets much worse towards the end of a contest? Well...that's because Link has 3 matches in 7 days towards the end of every contest. Single elimination means there is always a "groaner" week like this.
Why not use a different format? I'm not talking about double elimination, which would have much of the same problems. I'm talking...what if we forget about crowning a champion, and just give every character, say, 3 matches. And sure, match people with equivalent records, so 0-2 characters face other 0-2 characters.
Battle Bracket
My feeling about this is the same as last year: the chain bonus is too high compared to banking. Let's say I have two in a row correct, and have absolutely no idea about a third match--it's a 50% coinflip. I'm better-off flipping a coin and guessing the third match than I am banking. And it gets even worse: if I want to beat Bacon, I should bank relatively frequently if there is any doubt in my mind. If I want to win the entire contest, I need to play entirely different--it's go big or go home. I have to play in a way that will lose to Bacon 80% of the time. There's also never, ever a point to banking twice in a row. I would suggest the following changes:
Failed chain: -100
Chain of length X: +100*X
This way, you might actually bank twice in a row (to avoid the -100; although you probably still won't if you're going for broke) and you don't need to play in an extremely risky way to get a respectable score--although you still probably won't get on the leaderboard if you take no risks.
Granted, this doesn't handle the number of perfect battle brackets we had this year, which would likely still happen regardless of point system--for that you might want to do percentage betting throughout the entire contest, or something like that.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision