March Madness: A Quest for Perfection

by Matt Sweet

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

The NCAA Tournament is officially back.  With the opening ceremony (aka the “play in game”) being tolerated, we as bona fide sports fans are celebrating the morning of the Tournament  as we always do; incessantly checking and rechecking, erasing and remarking, researching and re-researching the history of the 12 over 5 seed (has happened 34 times in 100 matchups), and exactly who will pull off this evident inevitable feat.  Every sports enthusiast worthy of calling themselves a sports enthusiast becomes a combination of psychologist/soothsayer/philosopher/wise guy who all have in their possession the most coveted possession of March Madness:  The Perfect Bracket.

Even the President, who is filling out the bracket for the second year on ESPN, is on a Quest for the Perfect Bracket

No doubt by 7:30p tonight, nearly 90 percent of the brackets filled out will be busted, slathered in red if not thrown out altogether.  Those with strong brackets will still have that stray 8/9 matchup misfire that will result in a slap of the forehead.  But for those precious few who escape round one unscathed, the elusive Perfect Bracket could be achieved, right?

As far as statistics go, with 64 (sorry, 65) teams making up the field, and with 63 total games to be played, the chances of predicting the correct outcome of every game is 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1.  Incase you’ve never seen a number that large, that’s 9 Quintillion, 223 Quadrillion.  To 1.  In order for every possible bracket to be filled out, it would take every man, woman, and child over 43 years to complete.  If these brackets were constructed on standard sheets of paper, they would reach to the moon and back over 1.1 million times, and would weigh 90,000 times more than every person on the planet combined.  Let’s put it this way: If all you need to win the Mega Millions lottery (175,711,536 to 1) is “a dollar and a dream,” then all you need to fill out a perfect NCAA tournament bracket is a pen and a Delorean.  In other words, no, it’s not possible.  But that’s not the point.

According to RJ Bell of pregame.com, as of 2007, it was estimated that more than 10% of all Americans participate in March Madness “office pools.”  Estimating there are 300 million Americans, that’s at least 30 million Americans alone taking part, and with guys from across the pond like Leon joining the fun, there’s no telling how many brackets have been filled out since Sunday evening, and definitely no telling how many combinations of picks have been made among those people.

Not to philosophize, but this tournament is the purest contest remaining in sports.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen every regular season game, or were reminded that the tournament starts in almost 12 hours.  March Madness means 3 weeks of unblemished, unpredictable zealotry for not just winners and losers, but competition itself.  To be among these 65 teams is a reward in and of itself, and to watch proven elite competitors battling one another is what sports are all about, aren’t they?

3 weeks from now, a champion will be crowned and it will all be over.  But for these few moments of calm before the storm, we are all only a few pen strokes away from perfection.