It’s that time of year again, ladies and gentlemen.

Sixty-eight teams vie to be national champions for Division 1 college basketball. Since 1977, college basketball fans from all around the world have attempted the impossible to fill out a perfect March Madness bracket. In order to achieve a perfect bracket, one must predict the winner for sixty-seven games. After doing the math, I calculated the odds of achieving that illustrious feat is approximately 1 in 9.2 quintillion! You have a better chance of death by a vending machine, winning the lottery, and becoming president of the United States! So why do so many people continue filling out these brackets even though they understand that they have an extremely small chance of filling out a perfect bracket?

“I do it for the fun of it,” says Appleton North math teacher, Mr. Rueckl, “It brings a fun element to college basketball that you don’t see with any other sport.” He also said, “It’s a great challenge, you get to see who the ‘alpha-male’ is within your group of friends.”
As far as getting money involved, Mr. Rueckl likes to keep money out of it. However, if he’s feeling lucky he will put a little bit in and sometimes get a little bit out. When asked, Mr. Rueckl said he will be rooting for Duke University in this year’s March Madness tournament.
Junior Adam Zeratsky is also a huge college basketball fan. Unlike Mr. Rueckl, however, Zeratsky said, “I like to get money involved. Making a pool with my friends and seeing who wins at the end of it all is very rewarding. Bragging rights is also a fun aspect Zeratsky is rooting for the University of North Carolina in this year’s tournament.

As for myself, I also enjoy the thrill of filling out a bracket and seeing how lucky I really am, just like Mr. Rueckl and Zeratsky. I choose not to get money involved, but it is still very fun to fill out brackets and see if you can be the 1 in 9.2 Quintillion who are able to fill out a perfect bracket.