ABSTRACT
T he yearly ‘March Madness’ tournament organized by theAmerican basketball authority, NCAA, is one of the biggestsporting events in the USA. It goes on for about a month and is covered by all of the major television stations. Sixty-four university basketball teams take part in the tournament, and a total of 63 games are played. It is a knockout competition comprising six rounds. According to a preset playing roster, two teams compete, and the losing team is eliminated from the tournament. In advance
of tournament play, millions of Americans fill in forms known as ‘brackets’. These forms represent a diagram for the sequence of games to occur; participants fill in the diagram with their predictions of the winners. A perfect bracket is one that has correctly predicted the winners of all 63 games. In the thirty years since the 64-game tournament was established, a perfect bracket has never surfaced. The best attempt to date is that of a 17-year-old schoolboy from Chicago, who, in 2010, correctly predicted the results of all 48 games in the first two rounds. Quite a feat, considering that even predicting the outcome of all 32 games in the first round is next to impossible. President Obama, a big fan of the hoops, could hardly contain himself when, in 2011, he correctly predicted nearly all of the first-round wins, thereby gaining admittance into the group of best ‘predictors’ up to that point. Feeling rather well-pleased at such an accomplishment, he couldn’t prevent himself from crowing just a bit, in front of the television cameras. This brought on a wave of criticism. Did the president have nothing better to do? At that time, an earthquake and tsunami were wreaking havoc in Japan and elsewhere, and tensions were high in North Africa and the Middle East.
