A Perfect Bracket: A One-in-a-Nine-Quintillion Shot
By Mike Donovan

Every year around this time, an estimated 30 million Americans will all do one thing. Fill out an NCAA bracket. And every year, average, regular Joe fans like me will try to conquer the mythical beast known as the perfect bracket.

For four days in March, from Selection Sunday to the last moments before that Thursday’s opening tip-off, the avid college basketball fan again like myself, figures out every possibility and decides exactly where each team will finish in the dance. And then all the planning in the world is helpless as some college you’ve never heard of like Northwestern State wins a game and your bracket is shot straight to the River Styx.

Even with all the upsets in the world, it seems like at least one fan would be able to obtain perfection, right? Well, after a little research, it is clear the answer is no.

For starters, the odds of getting a perfect bracket are unbelievable small. If every team had an equal shot at winning each game, the odds would be one in nine quintillion of selecting every team correctly.

However since there are teams that are more likely to win, the odds get shifted and get more obtainable. As in now your odds are about the same that you will step foot on Jupiter. While statisticians disagree on the likelihood of the perfect bracket, the majority are from 150 to 240 billion to one.

I know what you’re thinking, that can’t possibly be right. I, Joe fan, can predict the perfect bracket with my all-knowing knowledge of every team in the country and a little bit of luck. You, however, would be wrong.

Here are some of things that are more likely to happen to you than selecting the perfect bracket; you get hit by lightning 400,000 times, you making 30 million holes-in-one in your lifetime, or you winning the grand prize in the Powerball lottery 1,000 times. As you can see, even Rex Grossman leading his team to a Super Bowl team is much more likely than you selecting the perfect bracket.

But despite the pure impossibility of selecting the perfect bracket, it still doesn’t mean I won’t be hoping for it again this year. Sure the odds are against me, but just like Ahab with his white whale, I will not give up my quest even if I get capsized along the way.

And if I do select that perfect bracket, the rewards will be great and all-coming. Foxsports.com offers $10 million for perfection, while Papa Johns is offering one million pizzas. Most on-line betting sites offer at least a million dollars with many willing to pony up even more.

So, in the end, you will not select all 63 teams correctly. It just won’t happen. But that doesn’t mean I will stop trying. At the end of the tournament you will know exactly who I am, the guy with a million pizzas.