The sliders are in the third sheet of the posted Google Sheet. Contest is definitely luck. What I did last year was run 20 simulations and keep track of the amount of wins each team had. This way I could get some rough probabilities of who would win. For example, if a 12 seed has a 45% chance to beat a 5 seed those are good odds for an underdog.
I wouldn't use sim results as do or die, but instead as another source of information to make an informed guess.