Today's Word: Feckless

On the subject of the NCAA tournament, everybody and their mother has an opinion on who is going to win. Duke? Northwestern State? George Washington? Could be any one of the above, or one of the 29 other remaining teams after the first round.

So, of course, if you're going to pick a winner, you have to pick a bracket. Seems simple enough, right? There are 63 total games in the NCAA tournament, 64 if you count the "play and in" game that pits the two worst-percieved teams to see who is, in fact, only second worst and thus worth of being entered into the tournament. Nobody scores that games on their brackets, so it doesn't count for much. It's there, though, if you're interested.

Anyway, since everybody has a bracket, every website has a bracket challenge. ESPN.com, for example, received at least 2.06 million bracket entries this year (I know, because one of my brackets is really bad, and that's its score). I have another bracket which is ranked at 193,000-something, putting me in the top 8 percent at least.

But enough bragging. Here's the thing: After the first 32 games, the first round, precisely zero ESPN.com users had a perfect score.

ZERO.

In fact, only two people had gotten 31 games right out of 32.

There are only 1024 possible combinations of winners in the first round (32 games, 2 possible winners from each game, means 32*32 possible combinations). So, if all users had just chosen randomly, there should have been 2000-some perfect brackets. But nope - only zero. Heck, just randomly picking, about 520 people could conceivably get all 63 games right. Alas, not a single person will do it this year, at least not on ESPN.com.

By contrast, approximately 300,000 students took the new SAT in March of 2005, the first time that the new 2400-point-scale test was administered. Of those students, 107 got a perfect 2400. Break that out into a 2.06 million-entry field, and you'll see that 734 students, give or take, would have gotten a perfect score.

That's right....seven hundred and thirty-four more people would have gotten a perfect SAT score than got perfect NCAA basketball tournament brackets. That's how much harder the NCAA field is to pick than the SAT is to take.

Now, there is more than just pride that comes from doing well in the brackets. Last year, ESPN.com awarded the top bracket prize (10 grand) to the top bracket in their contest. Of course, he only got 55 of 63 games right (87%). Six rounds, he got an average of one game wrong per round. Heck, I can still pull that off, right? I mean, all of my Elite Eight teams are still viable. Who knows? This time next month, I could be ten grand richer, and the envy of none of my friends.

If you want to see my bracket, including my rank, click here.

To see the current leaderboard on ESPN, click here.

And, to see the "wisdom of crowds" bracket, click here. This is based on one point per pick per person, so the teams are chosen based on number of picks by the overall user constituency. Really neat stuff, this is, and it's usually pretty close to right. Something like 93 percent last year.

So wish me luck. My pride and my bank account depend on it. Well, that and Tennessee beating Wichita State.