It is that time of year again for American college basketball when glory is achieved, hearts are broken, and analytics are consulted.
The National College Athletics Association's (NCAA) March Madness takes over the world of sports annually, featuring the country's best college basketball teams.
Aside from school pride, another thing that grips American viewers is the March Madness Bracket Challenge.
Players and coaches will have their own battles on the court while fans deal with their versions of anxiety through a game where they sort who meets who, starting from the Last 64 phase down to the championship game.
NCAA March Madness Schedule
The first round of March Madness 2024 starts on March 21, and the second round commences on March 23.
The Sweet 16 phase is scheduled for March 28. The Final Four is on Saturday, April 6, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, while the NCAA championship game comes two days after to be held in the same venue.
Read more: NCAA Tournament Dark Horse - Texas A&M Aggies Have History on Their Side
The UConn Huskies are the Defending Champions and the favorites to win again this year.
Short History of March Madness and how to play and win
The bracket format in tournaments goes way back. They first did it with a chess tournament.
People also did it in college basketball tournaments, but only up to eight teams.
The first documented NCAA bracket pool is traced in a State Island bar where 88 people filled out a bracket and paid $10 per bet in 1977. The winner takes everything.
At one point, the pool amount reached $1.5 million.
From there, many companies started joining the bracket challenge for the NCAA basketball tournament.
The most well-known is Warrant Buffet's March Madness bracket challenge for his Berkshire Hathaway employees launched in 2014. His tournament can win a participant $1 billion in cash prize.
Media institutions such as CBS Sports and USA Today have their own March Madness Bracket Challenge with different amounts of prize money.
Odds of winning in March Madness Bracket Challenge
The old brackets had only eight teams, but they went up to 16, then to 32, and now to 68. As the number of teams goes up, the stakes and difficulty levels also go up.
One probably has a higher chance of becoming the U.S. president than winning the tournament, which is probably why Buffett is generous enough to give $1 billion.
The odds of guessing all the games and winners of the March Madness bracket challenge is 1 in 9.2 quintillion (or 1 in over 9.2 billion).
Has anyone won the March Madness bracket before?
The simple answer is no. Since tracking online submissions in 2016, the NCAA has yet to find an entry that went perfectly from start to finish.
The closest one reached was 49 games in 2018. Greg Nigl's bracket correctly guessed the games and winners until the second round. His luck ended in the 50th game when no. 2 Tennessee was upset by third-seed Purdue, 99-94, in overtime.
A West Virginia man predicted 31 of the first 32 games from Buffet's own tournament. For that, he was rewarded $100,000.
Related article: Kentucky Wildcats Could Be Favorites to Win the NCAA Tournament
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