Going into the Sweet 16 round of the competition, Columbus’ Gregg Nigl still has a perfect bracket — meaning he has thus far chosen 48 game outcomes correctly. The odds of this are insane. Depending on which mathematician you trust, the chances of picking correctly this far into the competition are anywhere from a billion to a quintillion to 1.
Entering NCAA.com’s official March Madness bracket competition at the last minute (while supposedly sick and in bed), the 40-year-old Nigl is the only person of millions blessed with the gift of correct foresight.
According to the NCAA, in the history of official bracket selections no one has ever been verified to have chosen 48 games correctly, let alone all 64 games, so the chances of Nigl’s perfect bracket streak continuing are incredibly slim.
“I’m not very confident that it will stay that way,” Nigl told the Columbus Dispatch. “But anything can happen.”
Come April 8, Nigl has No. 1 seed Gonzaga taking out No. 2 seed Kentucky in the championship match-up. We’ll see how he does.
Sign up for Scene’s weekly newsletters to get the latest on Cleveland news, things to do and places to eat delivered right to your inbox.
This article appears in Mar 27 – Apr 2, 2019.