What Is the NCAA Bracket?

March Madness. How many times have you heard that this month? The staple college basketball tournament is back and as hyped up as ever before. As the NCAA college basketball tournament reaches its culmination, here is what you need to know about the infamous NCAA bracket challenge.

Every March, millions of US Americans fill out the NCAA bracket. Among the 68 men’s collegiate teams competing for the title of college champion, participants can predict the result of every potential match in the tournament. According to the NCAA, the odds of guessing every result correctly are a staggering one in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. If you know enough basketball to make an educated prediction, the odds shrink to a miserly 1 in 120.2 billion (Fox 13).

Because of these unfavorable odds, several bookmakers host bracket contests, each with large prize pools for winners. As of March 23rd, not one complete bracket has been accurate about every game in any of the tournament’s editions and the decades of this challenge–justifying the odds.

The allure of the bracket comes at the time of one of the premiere sports tournaments. Aside from the predictions, fans can expect to be treated to some show-stopping basketball.