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Nobody's perfect -- in life or the 2014 NCAA basketball brackets.
But Brad Binder gave it quite a ride, notching 36 correct men's tournament picks until he was derailed Saturday night.
Binder, 23, of Buffalo Grove, Illinois, picked the wrong team to win the Syracuse-Dayton game, killing his chance of a perfect 63-0 bracket in the Yahoo Sports' Tourney Pick'em pool.
Binder had picked every single game in the round of 64 and the first four games played Saturday. Then, Dayton upset Syracuse, 55-53. Binder had picked the Orange.
The pool is for bragging rights and has no prize money, unlike other bracket pools.
Binder forgot to enter the Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge, also run through Yahoo sports. He tweeted Saturday, 'And that was the closest I've ever come to not winning a billion dollars.'
Additionally, there were no perfect brackets remaining in ESPN's bracket challenge.
CBS Sports, which runs one of the bigger bracket challenges, previously reported that in the past two years the last remaining perfect brackets were eliminated in the 22nd and 23rd games of the tournament.
ESPN reports that of the roughly 30 million entrants it has had over the 13 years, no one has come close to a perfect bracket, and that only one person has had a perfect first round in the last seven years.
Binder told ESPN on Saturday he was in a rush when he was getting ready to leave for work when he filled out his NCAA tournament bracket online.
Although he had entered his bracket on the Yahoo website -- he did his picks in less than five minutes -- Binder forgot to enter the Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge. Quicken is one of the sponsors.
Quicken and co-sponsor Yahoo have an insurance policy sold to them by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which would cover the cost of any prize money. The companies did not disclose how many people entered the challenge.
Binder said that 'never in a million years' did he think he would be in this position.
'I was about to leave for work, and I was in a rush,' Binder said. 'I filled it out, and that was kind of it. I didn't even really think about it. However, if I can reach out to Mr. Buffett, if he would consider grandfathering me in to be eligible and if he can make an exception, that would mean a lot to me and give everyone, I guess, a perfect bracket to root for.'
Going into the tournament, winning Buffett's billion was the ultimate longshot -- 9.2 quintillion-to-1, by some estimates.
Posted by Unknown on Saturday, March 22, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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