9,223,372,036,854,780,000, the number of possible combinations in the 63 game NCAA college basketball tournament. The experts say it's more likely for one person to be struck by lightning twice on the same sunny day than winning some state lotteries, so I can't really imagine what kind of hyperbole people could come up with for filling out a perfect bracket with more than nine hexillion possible combos.Maybe - filling out a perfect bracket; less likely than Duke not choking in the first two rounds and advancing to the second week of play. It's alright Coach K, you'll get that 70th career tournament win someday.
Filling out a perfect bracket; less likely than Memphis hitting their free throws at the end of a close game.
Or my personal favorite - filling out a perfect bracket; less likely than underdogs going 4-0 at a tournament site in the first round, including 2 #12 seeds and 2 #13 seeds.
This year, in an effort to get more people to fill out brackets on their site, Yahoo! offered five million dollars for a perfect bracket, and of course could still feel comfortable that their money would stay safe in the bank. Face it, I could offer my first-born and the right to have a personal flying carpet, and a perfect 63 game bracket would still never come to be.
But this weekend, all of you lazy workers looking for a big break may have caught one. Yahoo! is offering one million dollars for a perfect second-chance bracket. Starting with the sweet sixteen and only fifteen remaining games in the tourney, there is now a much more manageable 32,768 possible combinations in this bracket. You know what that means? For the next two days you need to fill out brackets every waking moment you are available; fill them out during breakfast, during work, during lunch, during class, when your wife is trying to have a conversation with you, and before you go to sleep. Pick the obvious games and pick the upsets; make sure to mix and match crazy combinations. And because I opened your eyes to these great new odds, please feel obligated to give me a fraction of your newly found fortune when you pick that coveted perfect second chance bracket.
1 comment:
Accounting for the fine print details, which states that the winner also needs to pick the combined half-time score AND end-of-game total for each of the two teams in the championship game, and your odds increase from 1:32,768 to something more like a couple of BILLION. Of course this odds of winning depends purely on the range of possible scores. So fill out as many as you like, no one will win the grand prize... that is a guarantee.
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