The Odds of Filling Out the Perfect Bracket Are More Astronomical Than You Think
If you find yourself daydreaming about making all the correct picks for the NCAA Tournament, snap out of it. It's not happening.
Don't be Lloyd Christmas from Dumb and Dumber.
Actually, Lloyd Christmas had better odds to end up with Mary Swanson.
If filling out a perfect bracket was one in a million, it would've already been done.
No there won't. Not this year. Not any year.
The 1 in 9.2 quintillion odds actually isn't accurate.
If every game in the NCAA tournament was a coin-flip, then yes, 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 odds would be correct.
However, if you follow sports, you know not every team is created equal, and every matchup has a favorite.
The underdog component makes it nearly impossible to predict every game, though the odds improve if you know a few things about college basketball.
Instead of 1 in 9.2 quintillion, according to NCAA writer Daniel Wilco, those odds are actually 1 in 120.2 billion.
Even tech wizardry can't crack the bracket. At best, it can obtain around 74% accuracy, according to Georgia Tech professor Joel Sokol.
"So you're saying there's a chance?"
Good luck on your brackets this year.
Enter our bracket challenge here, where you don't have to make a perfect one to win money. (Though we'll give you a million bucks if you do...even though you won't).
$10,000 for anyone who makes 60 or more correct predictions.
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