WASHINGTON — Millions of March Madness brackets will break as the NCAA basketball tournament heats up Thursday and Friday.
The annual men’s and women’s tournaments are among the most closely watched sporting events in the U.S., partly due to their unpredictability.
“March Madness” is a basketball world term to reference the upsets, chaos and remarkable plays and moments that happen during postseason tournaments. Every year, millions fill out brackets in hopes of correctly guessing who will win each round.
Lower-seeded teams regularly beat the higher-seeded ones, throwing brackets and predictions completely out of the window.
What’s the closest to perfect March Madness bracket?
According to NCAA.com, the odds of picking a perfect bracket at random — not even counting the play-in games — is 1 chance out of 2 to the 63rd power, which is 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, or about 1 in 9.2 quintillion (give or take 20 quadrillion or so). According to University of Hawaii researchers, that is more brackets than the number of grains of sand on Earth.
However, NCAA.com also notes that the odds are more like 1 in 120.2 billion, if the person making the bracket takes into account info about which teams are better and tournament history.
It’s believed that the closest anyone has gotten to a perfect bracket occurred in 2019.
During the 2019 tournament, an Ohio man correctly guessed all the games going into the Sweet 16, according to NCAA.com. But his streak of 49 correct picks was ended when Purdue beat Tennessee 99-94 in overtime of the second game in the Sweet 16.
A record 22 million brackets were filled out on ESPN’s site in 2024, up 15% over the last year, with some of the early results knocking out millions. Mississippi State’s 69-51 loss to Michigan State and Brigham Young’s 71-67 loss to Duquesne each took out more than 9 million brackets. The biggest upset of the first day, third-seeded Kentucky’s 80-76 loss to Oakland, also did some damage: The third-seeded Wildcats were picked in 95% of brackets in the ESPN Tournament Challenge to beat the 14th-seeded Golden Grizzlies.
The last perfect men’s bracket in 2024 almost made it through the first round but was broken after No. 8 Utah State won over No. 9 TCU. It survived 31 games.
In 2023, it took just 25 games for there to be no more perfect brackets – after No. 16 FDU stunned No. 1 Purdue.
In 2022 and 2021, it took just 28 games for there to be no more perfect brackets.
What if I fill out a perfect bracket?
Well, you’d be the first.
If you do happen to make a perfect bracket, there could be more in it for you than just bragging rights.
Perfect bracket pickers have been offered as much as $1 billion. That’s the figure Warren Buffett offered to his Berkshire Hathaway employees in 2014 if any of them picked it perfect.