Mathematicians confirm the impossibility of a perfect March Madness bracket
- The NCAA March Madness tournament features 68 teams competing in 63 single-elimination games over several weeks.
- John Harris explains that only 25 million brackets created represent an insignificant fraction of 9.2 quintillion possible combinations.
- Experts emphasize the nearly impossible nature of creating a perfect bracket due to the vast number of unpredictable outcomes.
In March 2025, the NCAA conducted its annual March Madness tournament, featuring 68 Division 1 college basketball teams competing in a single-elimination format. The tournament unfolds over several weeks, culminating in one winning team. Millions of fans participated in creating brackets to predict the outcomes of the 63 games held during the tournament. However, a statistic from a math professor at Furman University, John Harris, indicated that despite 25 million brackets being submitted on a popular platform, this only represents a mere fraction of the 9.2 quintillion possible bracket combinations. This staggering number vastly exceeds the estimated grains of sand on Earth’s beaches and deserts. Experts, including Tim Chartier from Davidson College, pointed out that even attempting to create one billion unique brackets per second would take 300 years to exhaust all possibilities. The near-impossibility of predicting accurate outcomes highlights the unpredictable nature of sports, as even top-ranked teams can face unforeseen challenges or