March Madness: the season when all your basketball dreams (and a few nightmares) come alive! Every year, millions of hopeful fans dive into the chaotic frenzy of filling out their NCAA Tournament brackets, fueled by pizza, beer, and that ever-elusive dream of creating a perfect score sheet.

But let’s spill the tea, has anyone ever managed to fill out the mythical perfect bracket? Spoiler alert: the answer is a hard no.

In 2023, not a single entry submitted to major online bracket games made it past the 25th game, where Fairleigh Dickinson threw a major curveball by upsetting Purdue, the No. 1 seed. You thought Cinderella stories were reserved for Disney? Think again. The following year, the suspense cranked up when a No. 9 Utah State squad shocked everyone and ruined the last perfect bracket still standing after 31 games.

So, if you’re entering your bracket this year with glimmers of hope, let’s crunch some numbers, just how impossible is it to snag a flawless bracket? According to NCAA data, the odds are about as slim as finding someone in San Francisco willing to share their avocado toast: a staggering one in 9.2 quintillion (that’s 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 for those who prefer their big numbers in digits).

Even the golden boy of brackets, Greg Nigl from Columbus, hit the wall of reality in 2019 after correctly picking the first 49 games. He knows heartbreak well; Tennessee turned his hopes into dust when they lost in a tight overtime against Purdue. Up until that point, he was the underdog hero we didn’t know we needed. However, heartbreak isn’t new in sports, is it?

The NCAA has been keeping track of online submissions since 2016, sifting through the messy archives of past attempts. There’s a high probability someone out there jotted down a perfect bracket, it’s just that those people usually end up as legends in their own minds (sorry, not sorry). But as the numbers crank higher with the introduction of every tournament game, a complete clean sweep feels more unattainable than ever. If we included every game, the odds soar up to one in 147 quintillion, yep, that’s a whole other level of ‘impossible’.

So, keep dreaming, fellow fans! The perfect bracket may just be the unicorn we’ll never catch, but at least we can chuckle about it while we pretend to know what we’re doing. In the chaotic world of March Madness, stay tuned for all the glorious upsets, unpredictable victories, and, of course, the most excellent pizza party to drown our sorrows in. Cheers!