Warren Buffet and Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, may have found a loophole in Bill Gates' plan for the country's billionaires to give away a large portion of their money to charity and other types of causes. A partnership between Berkshire Hathaway (Buffet's company) and Quicken Loans (Gilbert's) is offering a billion dollars to anyone who fills out a perfect NCAA tournament bracket through the Quicken Loans website, according to Business Insider.
Likely, the conversation went something like this:
Dr. Evil Warren Buffet: Sh**. Oh hell, let's just do what we always do. Hijack some nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage. Yeah? Good! Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that a breakaway Russian Republic called Kreplachistan will be transferring a nuclear warhead to the United Nations in a few days. Here's the plan. We get the warhead and we hold the world ransom for... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Number Two Dan Gilbert: Don't you think we should ask for *more* than a million dollars? A million dollars isn't exactly a lot of money these days. Virtucon alone makes over 9 billion dollars a year!
Dr. Evil Warren Buffet: Really? That's a lot of money.
[pause]
Dr. Evil Warren Buffet: Okay then, we hold the world ransom for...
Dr. Evil Warren Buffet: One... Hundred... BILLION DOLLARS!
If a statement by Jay Farner, President and Chief Marketing Officer of Quicken Loans, is to be believed, the conversation went more like this:
"We've seen a lot of contests offering a million dollars for putting together a good bracket, which got us thinking, what is the perfect bracket worth? We decided a billion dollars seems right for such an impressive feat."
Whatever the case, the odds of stringing together a perfect bracket, given a standard knowledge of NCAA basketball and seeding, are 1 in 128 billion, according to a Depaul math professor. Disregarding seeds, the odds are 1 in 9.2 quintillion, an unfathomably large number.
Yet, I'd probably like my chances more at a perfect bracket if my picks were made randomly, and if I could then go back and make a few adjustments. Perhaps the approach would help me see teams in a new light.
In case someone beats the odds, he or she would have the choice of receiving $25 million once every year for the next 40 years or getting $500 million in one lump sum. Funny, but I bet most people would take the $500 million, especially those interested in owning a professional sports franchise in the near or immediate future, which means Derek Jeter would take the lump sum. Would you?