In 2019, a neuropsychologist in Columbus, Ohio, picked the greatest known bracket in men's NCAA basketball history. How he pulled it off is still a mystery.
In 2019, a neuropsychologist in Columbus, Ohio, picked the greatest known bracket in men's NCAA basketball history. How he pulled it off is still a mystery. Ryan Hockensmith is a Penn State graduate who joined ESPN in 2001. He is a survivor of bacterial meningitis, which caused him to have multiple amputation surgeries on his feet. He is a proud advocate for those with disabilities and addiction issues.
Nigl is one of those modest quiet people who is brilliant but would never say that. He's 45 and has worked as a neuropsychologist for the VA in Columbus since 2009, helping vets manage dementia, memory loss and other cognitive issues. He is meticulous, and when he says something, it automatically feels considered and wise. In the annals of mapping out family vacations, the scale would range from Clark Griswold at the low end to Gregg Nigl as the best-case scenario.
But as he got in the car on Saturday morning, still a little under the weather, he had no idea the reality of his situation: He was well on his way to having built the best NCAA men's bracket ever assembled -- one that he didn't even remember filling out.picked a verified perfect NCAA men's bracket, and it's probably not going to happen in our lifetime, or the lifetime of our kids, or their kids, or their kids.
Yet we can't stop trying. About 40 million Americans fill out an estimated 70 million brackets every year, with around $2 billion in prizes, according to the American Gaming Association. The 64-team format was introduced in 1985, and within five years, the NCAA tournament had become synonymous with office pools. Many featured entry fees and prizes, which technically made them illegal but catnip for millions of employees over the years.star Jay Bilas, it's been a wild ride.
But Bilas, Jacobson and Nigl all agree about what the single biggest factor of any great bracket is: pure luck. Nigl picked mostly teams he'd never seen play a minute of basketball. Of the four 12- and 13-seeds to win in the opening round, Nigl got all four of them right, a virtually impossible feat."Pretty much all luck," Nigl shrugs.
But throughout speaking with writer Daniel Wilco from NCAA.com that day in 2019, some mirky memories came flooding back for Nigl. He vaguely remembered getting an alert an hour before the tournament tipped off on Thursday. He was barely functional that morning, so he thinks in the fog of being sick he must have responded, started a group, filled out a bracket and laid back down.
By the time the day was over, the whole Nigl crew found their heads spinning. Deep down, Nigl felt a little silly telling the whole story. He was being treated like an NCAA tournament guru, booking a trip to Anaheim for him and his 9-year-old son, Kaiden, because of his masterful prognostications... and he wasn't quite ready to tell the world that it had been a mixture of cold medication and sleep-picking that got him there.
In Anaheim, they had a blast. Buick hooked them up with $500 spending money, a rental car, a place to stay and tickets to the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games. Everywhere Nigl went, his bracket came up in conversation. At the time, he was 48-for-48 and still going.Right before his Wolverines took the floor, he saw on his phone that his run was in trouble. He'd picked No. 2 seed
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