March Madness 2015: Does Anyone Have A Perfect Bracket?

Last year, Warren Buffett and Quicken Loans teamed up for the “Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge,” offering $1 billion to anyone that could correctly predict every winner in the NCAA Tournament. While the contest wasn’t offered in 2015, it appears that it wouldn’t have produced a winner for a second straight year.

Picking a perfect bracket is just about impossible, and it seems that no one has been able to do so in 2015. Not only are none of the 11.57 million bracket entries on ESPN.com perfect heading into the final weekend of March Madness, but the quest for perfection ended in the Round of 32.

After the Round of 64, only one entrant had picked every game correctly. That quickly came to an end, however, when Ohio State was unable to get past Arizona on the first Saturday of the tournament.

The man who picked the last perfect bracket was able to get further than anyone in 2014. No entry on a major website last year correctly predicted the 32 games on the first Thursday and Friday of the tournament.

If the “Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge” were to be offered every year, it’d still be an incredible surprise if there ever was a winner. There are 9.2 quintillion possible bracket scenarios, which is over one million times greater than 9 trillion.

While no one has a perfect bracket, March Madness has put some people in an unlikely position to win a lot of money. Derek Stevens, owner of The D and Golden Gate hotels in Las Vegas, made a $20,000 bet on Michigan State to win the national championship. The Spartans had 50/1 odds when the wager was placed on Dec.5, but they are now one of just four teams with a chance to win it all.

Michigan State is still a relative longshot to win the title, but their odds have greatly improved in the last four months. The betting website Bovada.lv currently has their championship odds set at 8/1. Kentucky is the odds-on favorite at 2/3.