$1 Billion Challenge for Perfect March Madness Brackets

The NCAA Men’s basketball season is well under way with conference matchups dominating the schedule. Regardless of what coaches and players tell you, their eyes or at least one of them is looking towards March Madness and an opportunity to win the national championship.

Sports bettors from the novice public bettor to sharp money bettors are all anxiously awaiting bracketology and the challenges of winning a work pool or even a large competition online.

Correctly predicting each game during the NCAA men’s tournament is not an easy task. However, making it more enticing and attractive is a new prize worth $1 billion to anyone who is able to successfully name every winner of every game in every region and then the three games of the Final Four.

Earlier this week, Quicken Loans announced it would team up with billionaire investor Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway for the Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge.

A qualified entrant who is able to correctly predict the winner of each game throughout the tournament would receive 40 annual payments of $25 million dollars.

The astronomical odds of successfully completing the feat are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1. That equates to 9 quintillion plus ways to fill out the correct brackets. Each household can submit just one entry.

If someone happens to be that lucky, and I mean a REAL LUCKY winner, that person can receive a lump-sum one-time payment of $500 million.

Jay Farner the president of Quicken Loans said he and his company had seen many contests that offered $1 million for putting a great bracket together. That started them thinking that what is each perfect bracket worth and what would the entire tournament be worth if someone were able to pull off such an incredible feat.

Besides the potential $1 billion grand prize, the 20 most accurate brackets that are “imperfect” will each win $100,000, to be used towards the financing, refinancing or the remodeling of a home, said the Quicken Loans president.

The odds are astronomically high, with the possibilities so low of a winner, the risk for Quicken Loans and Berkshire Hathaway is very little. Nevertheless, the chance to win such a large amount of money will have people following their favorite teams and all the competition leading up to March Madness.

This year’s picks could be even harder as there is no true front-runner in the nation. Arizona and Syracuse have been No. 1 or No. 2 for a number of weeks. Each of the schools is 18-0. However, Wichita State is 19-0 and ranked No. 5. There are three undefeated teams in the top 10 and seven teams with one loss or less in the top 13.

With many talented players opting to play one or two years at most at the college level before declaring for the NBA draft, parity is present in college basketball. Schools cannot have strong teams for three to four consecutive seasons unless they are successfully winning the recruiting wars each year.