Being eaten by a shark and 10 other events more likely to happen than a perfect March Madness bracket

(KTLA) — As both the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball tournaments approach, brackets across the globe will be filled out with hopeful hearts before being unceremoniously trashed when a 15-seed upsets a 2-seed or a tossup between the 8- and 9-seeds goes awry.

Truly, having a perfect bracket is one of the least likely occurrences to ever happen in life, but just how unlikely is it?

Betting odds released Tuesday by Bookies.com, a sports betting news and resource website, show that the odds of getting a perfect bracket — even if you use your basketball knowledge — are very, very slim.

The odds of getting a perfect bracket using your intuition are 120.1 billion to 1, according to the NCAA.

Georgia Tech professor Joel Sokol explains that most college basketball models predict the correct winner about 75% of the time. Based on that data, the odds of getting all 63 correct fall somewhere between 1 in 10 billion to 1 in 40 billion.

But NCAA data compiled by tracking the last five years of the official Bracket Challenge Game reveals sports fans pick correctly only about two-thirds of the time, bringing those odds down to the 1 in 120.2 billion figure.

Can you increase your odds of picking the perfect NCAA March Madness bracket?

To make those odds even longer, if you were to let a coin flip decide each of your picks, you’re creating odds on par with a celestial event. A randomized March Madness bracket offers odds of 9.2 quintillion to 1. To put that number into better perspective, a quintillion can also be described as “a billion billions.”

You have even better odds of winning either the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpots (both of which have been elusive as of late). Your chances at the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million and 1 in 302.6 million for the Mega Millions grand prize.

The site also notes you have a better chance of being eaten by a shark — 1 in 4.3 million during one’s lifetime — or bitten by one — 1 in 3.7 million, according to the Florida Museum. While we’re talking about animal encounters, you also have a higher chance of being attacked by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park (roughly 1 in 2.7 million for all park visitors) or an alligator in Florida (about 1 in 3.1 million, according to the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission) than making your March Madness bracket perfect.

Staying outdoors, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning (there is less than a 1 in a million chance that’ll happen, the CDC explains) than perfectly picking 63 winners. The odds are even better that you’ll be struck twice: 1 in 19 million. The NCAA even notes that you have a 23% better chance at guessing which of the Earth’s grains of sand someone has picked up than perfectly predicting the results of all 63 games.

As crazy as it may sound, you do, on average, have a better chance of going to the golf range and hitting a hole-in-one — 1 in 12,500 — than scoring a perfect bracket. The same goes for hitting two holes-in-one in the same round: 67 million to 1, the PGA reports.

While the odds may seem unbeatable, near-perfect brackets have happened before.

Gregg Nigl of Columbus, Ohio, currently holds the record for the longest verifiable streak of correct picks. In 2019, the neuropsychologist selected the first 49 match-ups correctly before 2-seed Tennessee lost to 3-seed Purdue in overtime during the second game in the Sweet 16, the NCAA reports. Speaking with the Today Show before his bracket busted, Nigl said his secret was “watching a lot of Big 10 basketball” and ESPN’s “Bracketology,” as well as “a lot of luck.”

Last year, the last perfect men’s bracket ended during the 25th game of the tournament, when No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson University upset No. 1 Purdue.

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If you simply love the annual tradition of filling out a March Madness bracket, the math suggests you go with your gut and trust your basketball knowledge.

But if you’re a betting person who is only interested in maximizing your earning potential, let the coin decide. It couldn’t hurt.

The NCAA projects that if every American filled out a completely unique bracket with 66% accuracy, it would take about 366 years for that perfect bracket to arrive.

Why not you?

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