It only took a few days into the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for Warren Buffet to put his billion-dollar check back in his pocket.
More than 60 million brackets were filled out in 2014 and not one was perfect halfway through the round of 32 teams. Fans were trying to win $1 billion from Buffet who said he’d pay out to any registered user that picked every game correctly.
Let’s be honest, who could have predicted Duke, Syracuse, Ohio State, Villanova, Wichita State and Kansas all losing so early? With the exception of Wichita State and Villanova, four of the biggest names in college basketball lost to double-digit seeded teams and ultimately busted millions of brackets.
This is also the first time since 1996 that Duke and North Carolina both lost before either reached the Sweet 16.
Ohio State alone was responsible for 80 percent of the brackets to be taken out of the running for Buffet’s billion dollars. The estimated odds of filling out a perfect 2014 NCAA tournament bracket were one in 9.2 quintillion.
With better odds of winning the lottery or being struck by lightning, millions of people were still shocked to see their Sweet 16 and Final Four teams eliminated just days into the tournament.
Only 3.3 percent of ESPN’s 11 million brackets had Duke losing in the round of 64 and only four percent picked Dayton versus Stanford in a sweet 16 matchup.
So of course it would only be fitting that 82 percent of ESPN brackets had Kansas in their Sweet 16 and 17 percent in the Final Four.
For any logical college basketball fan, this is truly madness.
Let this year be a lesson to those counting on the grand prizes to solve all your problems. You will not complete a flawless bracket.
It does not matter how many years you have watched college basketball or how many stat sheets you studied. In the month of March, you can toss out your vast knowledge of the sport because no one can predict the “madness”.
However, filling out a bracket has become more than just making a run for some lifelong dream that one in 9.2 quintillion of us will never reach. It is a way to compete with friends and family for bragging rights. It is a simple way to have fun while enjoying one of America’s greatest sporting events.
Like the old saying goes, “there’s always next year”.
