Bracketeering

Each time a pair of words competes in the bracket, they get scored based on a rule--and not every competition uses the same rule.

The exclamation points show that there's something different about the scores here: the lowest-scoring word won!

If you're not sure how to start figuring out the rules, look at each division individually; the names of each division clue a different rule.

Now that you know how the puzzle functions, you need to find a word that will always win every bracket no matter what.