Every year thousands of Americans fill out March Madness brackets. Major companies like Yahoo, Nike, Adidas and Capital One offer huge prizes to people who correctly choose the winners of each game. With 64 teams competing in several rounds, the chance of filling out a correct bracket is over one in nine trillion. In the past 12 years, no one has ever filled out an entire bracket correctly.

Despite these odds, basketball fans and sports fanatics spend hours filling these brackets out in hopes of creating the perfect bracket.

“Since I play basketball I think I know quite a bit what teams are going to win so I always fill out march madness brackets,” Freshman Jesse Starr said.

Filling out March madness brackets isn’t for just basketball enthusiasts however, anyone can fill out a bracket whether you know every single statistic or if you’ve never heard of the teams before.

This year was my first year of participating in the NCAA march madness tournament. I’m not much of a basketball fan, but I really got into the tournament this year. One positive of filling out a bracket is you have the opportunity to participate in online challenges with your friends, co-workers or family to determine who in the group created the best bracket.

The FHS Print Media class (the people responsible for producing the FHS press and the Shawnee yearbook) had a small March Madness tournament to simply win bragging rights about whose bracket was the best. Only one person in our entire class really knew much about basketball so we all had a pretty equal chance when it came to picking which teams would win.

I think the best thing about filling out a bracket is the opportunity to pick which teams will win before the tournament even starts. By picking which team is going to win each of the 63 games, fans who have filled out a March Madness bracket are able to root for the team they predict to win in each game.

While I usually don’t watch basketball (or sports in general), being able to really get into each game and root for the team I predicted to win was quite fun. Screaming, laughing and eating lots of typical sports-watching food were some of the highlights of this year’s NCAA tournament for myself.

I encourage everyone to take fifteen to thirty minutes to fill out a NCAA March Madness bracket each year and participate with friends in this fun and friendly competition. Even without the prize money incentive, March Madness is a fun thing for the whole family to take part in and who knows, you may just be that one in 9 trillion who fills out a perfect bracket one day and wins the thousands of dollars of prize money.