You’re probably going to get a lot of things right this year. A correct NCAA Tournament bracket, if you attempted one, was never going to be among them. In fact, you’d have had a much better chance trying your luck at the lottery than predicting all 63 matches where your brackets are concerned.
By now, all selections have been made null and void based on recent results. To those of you whose picks held up until last weekend, congrats.
The man who has come closest to picking the perfect bracket, Greg Nigl, went 49 for 49 in 2019. As we’ve since found out, the world might have never witnessed Gregg’s genius as he almost didn’t fill the pertinent one out because he wasn’t feeling very well ahead of the deadline.
“I did four. And I almost didn’t fill that one out, because I was actually sick on Thursday, and I filled it out Thursday morning, right before the deadline, and I almost didn’t do it,” he told NCAA.com. “I was lying in bed, I was sick, and I called into work. I almost went back to bed and didn’t fill it out, but I did it anyway because I felt bad because it was my friend’s group.
As for his strategy, Nigl watched a lot of ESPN’s Bracketology, while paying attention to the rankings. Of course, there was some luck involved - he picked one team to upset the other simply because he and his wife had visited friends near the team’s home the previous summer.
“I always watch Bracketology, I listen to them, take into account what they say,” he explained. “And then, honestly, sometimes it’s which teams I like better. Some cities I like better, some teams I like better, some coaches I like better. I do look at the rankings too. It’s a combination of things. Don’t get me wrong, a bunch of this is luck. I know that. I’m not going to say I knew every matchup by any means.”
Nigl had no idea his bracket was doing as well as it was until he was told so by an NCAA reporter. It was quite an incredible run, one we might never see the likes of again.
If you’re talking a perfect bracket, there are a lot more things more likely to happen than seeing one during this lifetime. Betway recently published an article on the astronomical odds of getting a March Madness bracket correct in its entirety. The odds were a lot longer than we could have imagined, but the data makes sense.
“A look at the unthinkable odds of correctly predicting all 63 games of the tournament shows why – as far as we know – nobody has ever pulled it off, and why it’s almost certain that nobody ever will,” the article reads.
“The chances of correctly picking all 63 games at random are a ridiculous one in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. That’s 9.2 quintillion.
“To put the size of that number into context, 9.2 quintillion seconds is the equivalent of 292 billion years.”
If you want some more context, here goes. You’re more likely to become an NBA player than you are likely to pick a correct bracket. How much more likely you might ask? 36 million times more likely. Of course, the number will be a bit lower if you’re already “nice.”
You’re also 185,000 times more likely to be dealt a royal flush in a game of five-card poker. Your chances of becoming a millionaire are also way higher than picking a perfect NCAA bracket - 140,000 times.
Another thing you’re more likely to do: get struck by lightning. While such misfortune is indeed rare, it has happened before and could happen again, though we sincerely hope that won’t be the case. According to Betway’s observation, you’re 120,200 times more likely to get struck by lightning than - at the risk of being overly repetitive - score a perfect bracket.
Okay, last one. So far, only one person is known to have gotten hit by a meteorite, and it happened way back in 1954. Ann Hodges was napping at home when the object crashed through the roof of her house in Alabama, struck a radio, then hit her on the hip. Talk about a rude awakening.
The 8.5 lb rock is now an exhibit at the Alabama Museum of Natural History.
Right, so you’re 75,000 times more likely to get hit by a meteorite than pick that bracket, with the odds of such said to be 1 in 1.6 million.
Here's a random thought, how about picking the Premier League goal leaders for the next 10 seasons?
