Buffett’s billion no longer up for grabs

Associated Press

The billion dollar dream is over.

A second day of upsets ended any chance of someone having a perfect NCAA tournament bracket in Warren Buffet’s $1 billion challenge. It was a favorite that provided the first blemish on the final three people’s brackets in the Quicken Loans contest on the Yahoo Sports website.

All three had ninth-seeded George Washington beating Memphis. The Tigers won 71-66.

“If Warren Buffett wants to donate the (billion) to our university, we will take it and use it in good company,” Memphis coach Josh Pastner said. “We’ll find a way.”

It only took 25 games for everyone to be eliminated. Then again most of brackets were knocked out on the tournament’s first full day. The number of unblemished brackets kept dwindling after third-seed Duke, sixth-seed Massachusetts and seventh-seed New Mexico lost Friday.

Only 16 people remained perfect after 10th-seeded Stanford topped New Mexico. Then Tennessee routed UMass, leaving only six people with a chance of beating the 9.2 quintillion-to-1 odds.

Gonzaga’s victory over Oklahoma State cut that down to the final three.

Even though no one won the $1 billion, the top 20 scores will still each get $100,000.

Quicken Loans, which is sponsoring and insuring the Buffet contest, said on its Twitter feed that it wouldn’t reveal the number of entrants to the challenge. The pool was supposed to be capped at 15 million entries. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if they had let more people join.

At CBSSports.com, only 0.03 percent of entrants were still perfect after Mercer upset Duke. They didn’t last much longer as Tennessee’s rout of UMass wiped out all the remaining unblemished entries. It took 21 games to end everyone’s hope of perfection this year. Last season it took 23 games and 24 in 2012.

A year ago, not a single person of the 11 million who entered on ESPN’s website was perfect after a first day filled with upsets. Just four got 15 out of 16 right.

This year people lasted a little longer. After the first 25 games, three perfect brackets remained out of the 11 million entered.

CELEBRITY ALUM

Speaking of upsets, it’s too bad Oklahoma doesn’t award frequent-flyer miles. Otherwise, Toby Keith would have something to show for the trip.

The country music singer and die-hard Sooners fan was on a concert tour of Australia when he learned Oklahoma was playing North Dakota State in the NCAA tourney at Spokane, Wash., and he wasn’t about to let a small inconvenience like the Pacific Ocean get in the way of attending.

Keith described his journey to AP’s Carey Williams this way: “We left two days ago, went to Hawaii, spent the night, let the pilots get a little sleep and rested up so we could get in here and make this game.”

Unfortunately, the result wasn’t as smooth as the getting there.

On the plus side, Keith had already written his best-selling song, “A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action” nearly two decades ago. Otherwise, the temptation to pen something to remember the trip by might have been impossible to resist.

CELEBRITY ALUM, HONORABLE MENTION

Don Schneider didn’t travel quite that far to watch his beloved Badgers. But at least his sacrifice paid off.

The 62-year-old steel salesman was the only patron inside Snapper’s Sports Bar & Grill in Honolulu when it opened just before 7 a.m. local time. Schneider explained that he and wife Karen have a timeshare at the nearby Hilton, which is why they’re usually in paradise for March Madness. He was already halfway through a Budweiser at the Waikiki watering hole, a popular spot for wandering Wisconsin fans that opened 90 minutes early Thursday, when he ran into AP stringer Sam Eifling.

“Last year I started watching on the app in the hotel room,” he said. “This is way more fun.”

For the first hour, Schneider was virtually the entire party. And the way Wisconsin came out early against American University, the mood wasn’t likely to improve in a hurry.

Asked whether he’d ever seen the Badgers look so flat in the tournament, Schneider laughed, “I don’t remember, I drink too much beer.”

Then he remembered this Wisconsin team, for a change, has some scorers, and began rattling them off: “(Frank) Kaminsky. (Ben) Brust. And (Sam) Dekker! Oh, man. Sheboygan boy!”

Sure enough, in the second half, it was all Badgers. And Schneider ordered another Bud.