Each year, three major websites — Yahoo, ESPN, CBS — generate millions of bracket entries for the NCAA Tournament. And each yeah, all of them fail to produce the perfect bracket.
The final hope for the 2017 edition came in the form of a Yahoo user that deployed an entry called “Dario’s Delinquents” but, as the Iowa State Cyclones faltered late on Saturday evening, that previously perfect bracket went up in flames alongside Steve Prohm’s team. The full entry can be seen here:
Prior to 2017, only one entry (from a gentleman named Brad Binder in 2014) in the 18-year history of Yahoo’s bracket event produced a complete and perfect first round bracket of 32 correct picks. This time around, the site reports that an unfathomable 36 perfect brackets existed through Friday but, by the end of Saturday, there was only one bracket to sweat with regard to potential perfection.
In fact, it appears to be the only perfect bracket included on Yahoo, CBS, or ESPN that lasted to that point.
There are no perfect brackets remaining in the ESPN Tournament Challenge
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) March 19, 2017
Given the relatively chalky nature of the 2017 field to this point, it doesn’t seem quite as crazy that a perfect bracket would exist. Still, the presence of Wisconsin and Xavier in the Sweet 16 threw enough of a wrench into the festivities to send the great majority of entries begging and it was a run-of-the-mill misfire in placing faith in No. 5 seed Iowa State that ended things for this internet hero.
The statistical likelihood of submitting a flawless bracket remains incredibly minuscule. To that end, no one should be surprised that even the luckiest of basketball fan would see the dream die before the end of the first weekend. Still, the last fan standing enjoyed a heck of a ride through three full days of the 2017 edition and a large swath of the basketball-viewing population will enter the 2018 proceedings with grand optimism as a result.
