March Madness, minus the March
A word on perfectionism
A few weeks ago, a friend sent a message to a group chat I’m in asking if anyone wanted to do a March Madness pool. I was excited, I’ve never done one before! I sent my $5 and went about filling out my bracket.
Believe it or not, I did have a strategy. I picked Catholic teams, I picked all of the teams ranked 11th because I saw that they statistically are most likely to upset their opponents. I picked Purdue to win it all because I live in Indiana and that seemed like it would be fun.
The first loss on my bracket was when Clemson lost to McNeese. I had never heard of McNeese, so I had not picked them.
Immediately I felt like a failure. How could I be so dumb? McNeese was ranked 12th, which is very close to 11th, and statistically 11th place teams were most likely to upset! Why oh why did I not see this coming?!
If you’re thinking, “This girl is insane,” well, you would be correct and I have the psychological evaluation to prove it.
I looked at the pool and no one had a perfect bracket. I was still tied for 1st place, but I realized this whole process would not be very fun because of my competitive nature. I’ve worked really hard in my life on not being a perfectionist, as in my tendency, and in letting go of things that don’t really matter.
I texted the friend who had invited me to participate (she’s actually a mathematician) and told her that I am entirely too much of a perfectionist to participate in March Madness. She explained that no one had ever had a perfect bracket in the history of March Madness.
No one. Not a single person out of the estimated 60 to 80 million brackets that are filled out every single year had ever been perfect. The closest anyone has ever gotten was in 2019 when a man in Ohio correctly guessed all of the games going into the Sweet Sixteen, guessing the winners of 49 out of the 63 games correctly. The odds of getting a perfect bracket is 1 in 9.2 quintillion. I’ve never even typed or said “quintillion” before.
Currently there are zero (0) remaining perfect brackets for 2025 March Madness. And you better believe there’s a lesson in here.