Sports Talk

Why nobody gets a perfect March Madness bracket (a short explainer)

Seeing people at work act shocked their bracket is busted again, so here's the boring math. 63 games, each one roughly a coin flip if you know nothing. That's 2 to the power of 63 possible brackets, about 9.2 quintillion. Even if you know basketball well and the odds get way better, they're still astronomically bad.

Skeptical take: most 'expert' brackets don't do much better than picking by seed with a few upsets sprinkled in. The upsets are the whole point of the tournament, and also the reason no model nails it.

Final is tomorrow night. How's everyone's bracket looking, honestly?