Eaten by a shark, winning the Powerball and other events more likely than a perfect March Madness bracket
As the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament approaches, brackets across the globe will be filled out with hopeful hearts before being unceremoniously trashed when a 15-seed upsets a 2-seed or a tossup between the 8- and 9-seeds goes awry.
Truly, having a perfect bracket is one of the least likely occurrences to ever happen in life, but just how unlikely is it?
Betting odds released Tuesday by Bookies.com, a sports betting news and resource website, show that the odds of getting a perfect bracket using your basketball knowledge are worse than being eaten by a shark or winning either the Powerball or Mega Millions lotteries.
The odds of getting a perfect bracket using your intuition are 120.1 billion to 1, the website claims. Winning either of the big ticket lottery games has odds around 300 million to 1 — much, much, much better odds, albeit still extremely unlikely.
The website cites Georgia Tech professor Joel Sokol and the NCAA for the detailed breakdown of the perfect bracket odds.
According to Sokol, most college basketball models predict the correct winner about 75% of the time. Based on that data, the odds of getting all 63 correct fall somewhere between 1 in 10 billion to 1 in 40 billion.
But NCAA data compiled by tracking the last five years of the official Bracket Challenge Game reveals sports fans pick correctly only about two-thirds of the time, bringing those odds down to the 1 in 120.2 billion figure.
To make those odds even longer, if you were to let a coin flip decide each of your picks, you’re creating odds on par with a celestial event.
A randomized March Madness bracket offers 9.2 quintillion to 1. To put that number into better perspective, a quintillion can also be described as “a billion billions.”
Below is a list of those perfect bracket odds compared to other rare and unlikely events:
Event | Odds-To-One |
|---|---|
Perfect NCAA Bracket (Coin Flip) | 9.2 quintillion |
You Being Born | 400 quadrillion |
Winning Powerball & Mega Millions | 75.6 quadrillion |
Perfect NCAA Bracket (Basketball Knowledge) | 120.1 billion |
Having Sextuplets | 3.939 billion |
Winning Mega Millions | 302,575,350 |
Winning Powerball | 292,201,338 |
Eaten By A Shark | 264 million |
Becoming President (US only) | 32.6 million |
Struck By Lightning Twice | 19 million |
Birthing Identical Quadruplets | 15 million |
Dying In A Plane Crash | 11 million |
Becoming An Astronaut (US only) | 7.697 million |
Dying From A Bee Sting | 6.5 million |
Attacked By A Shark | 5 million |
Grizzly Bear Attack (Yellowstone) | 2.7 million |
Becoming A Movie Star | 1.5 million |
Flipping Heads 20 Straight Times | 1.04 million |
Die From Flesh-Eating Bacteria | 1 million |
Struck By Lightning | 960,000 |
Being Dealt A Royal Flush | 649,739 |
Winning An Olympic Medal | 662,000 |
Blackjack 3 Times In A Row | 22,722 |
Flopping A Royal Flush | 19,600 |
A Hole In One | 12,500 |
A 4-Leaf Clover | 10,000 |
Living To 100 (US Only) | 3,777 |
If you simply love the annual tradition of filling out a March Madness bracket, the math suggests you go with your gut and trust your basketball knowledge.
But if you’re a betting man or woman who is only interested in maximizing your earning potential, let the coin decide. It couldn’t hurt.
The NCAA projects that if every American filled out a completely unique bracket with 66% accuracy, it would take about 366 years for that perfect bracket to arrive.
Why not you?
For more on these long perfect bracket odds, click here.
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