Which Road?

So I'm a Duke fan.
Also being a part-time sports writer and sports media junkie, I know that a lot of so-called experts feel like the Blue Devils got the easiest road to the Final Four and there's some sort of conspiracy involved.
Thus, I did a little research to ease their troubled minds.
Since the tournament is currently in the middle of the Sweet 16 round, I decided to take the average RPI from ESPN.com for each number one seed's first three opponents.
This posed two obstacles.
First of all, Kansas lost in the second round, so I just used Michigan State as their third opponent since that's who they would have played.
Second of all, I decided to use the average RPI of the two play-in teams for Duke's first round opponent.
(Editor's note: This touch did not make a difference. Let it be known that I've always thought the overall top seed should play the play-in winner.)
After all that math, I discovered the following standings, with the easiest road being number 1:
1. Duke avg. 68
2. Kentucky avg. 66.7
3. Kansas avg. 65.3
4. Syracuse avg. 54.7
So, there's some merit to the thought that Duke has a slightly easier road... at first glance.
I did some more math later, but just using this first set of rankings, I decided to throw out the opening round.
Why?
Because no number one has EVER lost in the first round, so those games don't matter and the 16-seeds are often lower conference champions that have to be included despite horrendous RPI's.
If you take the average of the second- and third-round opponents, the standings go as follows:
1. Kentucky avg. 41.5
2. Syracuse avg. 23.5
3. Kansas avg. 22.5
4. Duke avg. 17
So in the games where number one's are realistically susceptible to upset (see Kansas and Syracuse), Duke has had the toughest road.
Also, if you combine the two standings, Kansas' overall number one seed has earned them the most difficult road to the final four that included an upset trap with the ESPN RPI #17 Northern Iowa lurking as the number nine in their corner of the dance.
I then took my research another level to see which bracket's top seeds were the toughest, averaging seeds two through four in the regions.
This is what I got:
1. Kansas avg. 19
2. Syracuse avg. 14.7
3. Duke avg. 11.7
4. Kentucky avg. 11
After all this "assesserizing" of the bracket, I have come to one conclusion: whether you look at who they did play or who they were supposed to play, the top seeds had pretty equal roads to the Final Four.
Duke had the easiest first round opponent, but Kentucky's next two opponents were the weakest, while Kansas would've theoretically had the easiest venture in the Sweet and Elite rounds.
The only glaring injustice I discovered was that Northern Iowa was way too good to be a nine seed, but Kansas already showed us that.
The next most surprising seed was that California, the number eight seed Duke played in the second round and defeated by 15 points, was ranked 18th.
That's just one spot behind Northern Iowa, and makes Duke's second round opponent a tougher draw than any eight or nine seed other than UNI.
I thought they had a cupcake bracket?
Please give any "journalist" who feels this way my number or e-mail address. ;)