How Hard Is It to Make the Perfect Bracket?

Coming into the third month of the year there are only two things on people’s minds:

1. How did I already fail my New Year’s Resolution?

2. March Madness

2023 has already proven itself to be a monumental year for basketball. From Lebron James beating Kareem Abdul Jabar’s all-time scoring record, to Kevin Durant being traded to the Suns and claiming a spot alongside Chris Paul and Devon Booker, new fans are pouring into the sport. There are more people making brackets now than ever—even non-sports fans are taking their shot at trying to get the perfect bracket. So, how hard is it?

 Prediction Statistics

Hypothetically, if you knew nothing about basketball and decided that flipping a coin would give you the best chance, you would have a 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (9 quintillions or 1 billion, billions) percent chance to get a perfect bracket.

If you are somewhat familiar with college basketball and strategically guess the outcome of every game, you would have a 1 in 120.2 billion percent chance of getting the perfect bracket. To put that into perspective, if you were to count to one billion with no breaks, you would finish in 31 years. If you took a billion-step hike, you would walk around the equator over 15 times. Finally, if you saved a hundred dollars a day, you would have one billion dollars in 27,397 years. Sorry to spoil anyone's plans of becoming a billionaire!

The positives

Now with all the disheartening statistics out of the way, let’s get to some more positive ones. The longest streak of correct guesses in a bracket is 49. This is only 14 games off the total 63 games played in the tournament (78% correct picks). The record for correctly guessed games is increasing rapidly from 36 correctly picked games in 2014 to 49 in 2019—a whopping 27% increase in correct guesses. The streak will continue to rise in the coming years considering the increase in fans and the sheer number of brackets being made.

As an incentive to make the perfect bracket, Warren Buffet’s company Berkshire Hathaway and the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Dan Gilbert, partnered to pay 1 billion dollars to anyone who completes the perfect bracket. The payout will be given in increments of 25 million every year for 40 years. Nothing better than waking up with a cool 25 mil in the bank account.

While the stakes are high and the odds are low, making the perfect bracket is definitely a daunting task. One thing to be sure of is that anyone who is able to should give their best shot at making at least a couple of brackets. They are totally free to make and take minimal time and effort to complete. Just be sure to remember that only 15 million bracket entries are allowed in Buffet and Gilbert’s bracket challenge, so make sure to get as many bracket entries in as early as possible.

I wish good luck to everyone reading this, and please don’t forget me when you get rich!

Be Well, Auburn.