What Are The Odds Of A Perfect March Madness Bracket?

Every year, countless college basketball fans look to achieve the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But, just how impossible is it?

Every year, college basketball fans frantically fill out their brackets in hopes of predicting who will take home the national title, with some looking to do the impossible by accurately forecasting the entire field. But, just how impossible is it?

Well, let’s just say, CBB enthusiasts in search of a perfect bracket would be better served prioritizing their time elsewhere, given the overwhelming odds.

For starters, let’s acknowledge the fact any brave soul looking to achieve the outlandish goal can only do so by predicting all 63 games in the tournament. To date, the closest anyone has ever gotten to the mark since the NCAA started tracking online brackets in 2016 came four years ago, when an Ohio man predicted the first 49 picks before his streak ended in the ’19 Sweet 16. 

As impressive as those 49 picks were, anyone looking to match or exceed that amount may be a little discouraged to learn they can’t exactly aim high enough to meet that threshold considering the numbers. According to the NCAA, the odds of filling out a perfect bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (or approximately 1 in 9.2 quintillion). 

For comparison, devoting time to making your picks would give you the same chances at going 63-for-63 as you would by guessing or making your picks after flipping a coin. But, don’t fret, CBB fans: those odds actually decrease to a slightly more “reasonable” 1 in 120.2 billion if you, as the NCAA put it, “know a little something about basketball.”

Need another example to better understand the bigger picture? The NCAA cited a 2012 study conducted at the University of Hawaii that estimated there are 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on Earth. If a person was handed one of those grains and asked to guess which one had been chosen, the odds of getting it correct would be “23 percent better than picking a perfect bracket by coin flip,” per the NCAA.

Needless to say, the numbers look daunting however you slice them, but there are still likely more than a few fans who will enter the 2023 tournament looking to pull off the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Even if the odds aren’t exactly in their favor.