Quicken 1, 15 million NCAA tournament bracket hopefuls 0. Talk about a bracket buster.
ESPN.com and extramustard.si.com reported that the Quicken Loans Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge ended with the grand prize safely tucked away in Warren Buffett's back pocket.
When Memphis beat George Washington in a round-of-64 game Friday night at about 9 p.m. Eastern Time, the last remaining challenger to correctly pick all 63 tournament games lost.
The odds of selecting a perfect bracket were estimated anywhere from 1 in 128 billion to 1 in 9.2 quintillion, so the likelihood of that happening was never a serious consideration in the first place.
But No. 14 seeded Mercer's upset of No. 3 seeded Duke all but wiped out the remnants of the billion dollar dream.
ESPN, which had more than 11 million bracket entries, had 18,741 perfect brackets after the first 16 games on Thursday. After Duke's ouster and Stanford's win over New Mexico, the number of perfect brackets stood at 66.
When Memphis coach Josh Paster heard what his team had accomplished, he told reporters after the game, "If Warren Buffett wants to donate the (billion) to our university, we will take it and use it in good company. We'll find a way."
ESPN added that its own tournament never has had an entrant that has picked the perfect bracket. Only once in the past seven years has anyone gone through the round of 64 unscathed.
But as Sports World News reported via information from the Chicago Business Journal, Quicken Loans found a way to obtain 15 million email addresses and phone numbers as a result of the contest.
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