COLLEGE PARK, Maryland — 1 in 9.2 quintillion. Those are the odds of creating a perfect March Madness bracket, according to Forbes.
ESPN had 13.3 million bracket entries in their annual Tournament Challenge as of Wednesday night. It’s unlikely any of those entries will survive the first round without at least one wrong prediction; the longest verified perfect bracket streak in a major online pool was 34 games, according to the NCAA.
2015 was the worst year in recent history for perfect brackets in ESPN’s annual contest. Out of 11.6 million entries, only 273 remained after the first day — 0.002 percent of all entries. Two 14-seed teams won that year including the UAB Blazers, who were picked to win in just 5.1 percent of brackets, according to ESPN.
President Obama, perhaps the nation’s most celebrated basketball prognosticator, never got close to picking a perfect bracket. He came closest in 2012, picking 44 out of 63 games correctly in ESPN’s pool. Though he only picked 43 out of 63 games in 2011, he did better than 87 percent of players — his highest percentile rank, according to ESPN.