March Madness Brackets: The Ultimate Social Network Machine Takes Over in Many Offices as Prognosticators and Pundits Seek a Perfection No One Has Ever Achieved

Basketball is "in the air" where else?

Joseph Duarte at the Houston Chronicle has a great article on college basketball tournament "March Madness" titled Bracket madness takes over in many offices, estimating that 40 million people may be filling out at least one bracket, if only in an office pool.

Duarte writes that brackets covering all 68 teams can be filled out in 147.5 QUINTILLION ways (!). Of course, the actual odds are much less than that since some team victories are locks (e.g. a No. 16 seed has never beaten a No. 1 seed, etc.).

Nevertheless, no one has ever produced a perfect bracket -- really, not even close. The outcome of games is simply that unpredictable.

Duarte gives some examples of how close people have come, e.g. an initial 48 of 48 and then only 5 of 15. Take a look.

Online Brackets for March Madness (USA -- NCAA Division I College Basketball Championship Tournament)

For fans of March Madness, here are what I have found to be the major online March Madness Bracket, Tournament and Pick Challenges for the Upcoming 2011 NCAA Division I Basketball Championship

• NCAA March Madness Bracket Challenge
   
• ESPN Round by Round Pick 'em Tournament Challenge
   
• Yahoo! Sports Tourney Pick'em
   
• Hooters Fox $1,000,000 Bracket Challenge
   
• CBSSports College Basketball Brackets
   
• CBSSports.com Brackets on Facebook (app)
  (you have to add this as a Facebook application to play - I do not use Facebook apps because of privacy concerns and general invasiveness, but this may be of interest to those using apps and not worried about privacy)