Let the Madness Begin

March is here which means that the annual March Madness Tournament for College Basketball is underway. March Madness is a 64 team tournament for the top teams in Division 1 basketball. Millions of people each year spend time watching the games, but maybe more importantly, filling out their brackets. 

Companies such as ESPN and CBS allow for fans to fill out their predictions of the game and compete with their friends. Each year people try to achieve the illustrious “perfect bracket” The odds of filling out this 100% correct bracket is about 1 in 9.2 quintillions or about 1 in 9,000,000,000,000,000,000. If you somehow achieve this, you could walk away with one million dollars. 

The longest anyone ever gone in the tournament through a perfect bracket is a sweet sixteen. The last time this was achieved was by a neuropsychologist from Columbus, Ohio named Gregg Nigl. Nigl predicted the first 49 games correctly before the 2019 tournament before busting in game 50 when the number three seed Purdue beat the two seed Tennessee in overtime.

This year, the favorites to win the tournament include Gonzaga, Illinois, Michigan, and Baylor. Although in recent years we have learned that anything is possible. 

Senior college basketball watcher, Paxton Reading, says “I made 3 brackets, all on ESPN.” Reading continued by saying he believes “it’s the best site,” and “suggests people use it.”