The $5 Million Bracket

Today kicks off March Madness, one of the greatest days of the year if you're a sports fan. 'Tis the time that family, friends, and coworkers are vigorously filling out brackets, breaking $20 bills in order to pay the $5 or $10 entry fee for tourney pools, and researching potential Cinderellas. Personally, I've entered five brackets into competition this year.

If you haven't heard, Yahoo is offering $5,000,000 to anyone who predicts a perfect bracket. That'd be a decent return on your investment, especially for a free entry. But the chances of accomplishing such a feat are remote, to say the least. According to mkaz.com, you have a better chance of winning the lottery two days in a row than you do at picking the perfect bracket. What does is it actually translate to in terms of your actual chances? Assuming equal odds (50/50) for each team in each game, simple statistics tells us that the odds of picking a perfect bracket in this scenario would be calculated as 2^64, or 1 in 18,446,744,073,709,551,616! I don't even what that number is - quintillion?!?

Anyways, according to this study at Yale, a more realistic estimate of the odds can be set at about 1 in 970 million. This estimate is derived by using the historical 72% winning percentage for favorited teams and projecting that throughout each game.

I registered both of my two Yahoo brackets for this $5 million prize. One bracket I filled out normally, mixing my less-than-perfect forecasting skills and questionably average college basketball knowledge, and entered this bracket into a league run by a friend of a friend for $10.

Let's just say that I decided to go for it all with my second bracket.

Coach Belichick is probably a Bracket Master!

With the odds that I just described above in mind, I determined that it would not be wise to pursue perfection with my flawed objectivity and false sense of Bracketology savvy. I needed to concede to a higher authority, someone (or thing) that could give me a better chance at achieving such perfection. Since Bill Belichick was not available, I felt the best method of attack was to create a completely random bracket.

The logic makes sense - at least it does to me. I figure that the tournament is a crapshoot anyways. One team, one game, one shot can ruin a perfect bracket. Most brackets are ruined after Round 1. According to the post from mkaz.com, you have a meager 1 in 390,625 chance of even perfecting the first round. Relative unknowns like Gonzaga come out of nowhere and surprise everyone. Just as recently as 2006, #11 seeded George Mason rolled through their region and straight into the Final Four, the lowest seeded team to ever reach the Final Four. The lowest seed to ever win the championship was a #8. The lowest seed to ever reach the Elite Eight was a #12. And the lowest seed to ever reach the Sweet 16 was a #14. The magic is finding the right combination of timing and seeding. Who will be the surprise team? When will they surprise? And how far will they go? Even if you do align all of those stars, that still leaves you about 60 or so games to pick correctly.

So, here's what I did. I set up the bracket in Excel basically as it would appear on your standard ESPN, Yahoo, USA Today, or CBS Sportsline printout. Then, I calculated the odds of each team winning its first round matchup based solely on that team's seed. For example, Pitt's odds of beating Oral Roberts in Round 1 would be set at 76.5%, [1-(seedA/(seedA + seedB)]. I then set Excel to randomly generate numbers (seeds) for each first round game based on these calculated percentages. To complete the bracket, I simply repeated this simulation for each remaining round. The result is the perfect bracket.

Without further ado, here is the $5 Million Bracket (opens a new window). Feel free to copy my answers if you'd like to win your pool.

Four notes on my Perfect Bracket:

#1) Fortunately, I do have a #12 seed beating a #5 seed in the opening round.

#2) I'm more confident in this bracket considering that Excel at least picked one of the favorites to win the National Championship, North Carolina.

#3) My East Region is highly interesting.

#4) In order for me to win the $5 million and accomplish something that has never been accomplished before, something will have to occur in the tournament that has never occured since the field has been expanded to 64+ teams; all four #1 seeds will have to make the Final Four. But, hey, in order to achieve unconventional ends, sometimes you've got to engage in unconventional means.