Billion Dollar Challenge Gets Lots Of Interest

In January 2014, mega-billionaire & philanthropist Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway and billionaire Daniel “Dan” Gilbert of Quicken Loans and majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team released their idea of a neo-impossible Quicken Loans Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge [with Yahoo Sports], where you pick all 63 games correctly, a perfect bracket, in the NCAA mens college basketball tournament and win or share one billion US dollars.

Dedicated sports fan and Yowlink co-founder, @csharpe, shared the information and it’s interesting really.  He’s the sports expert but, as he calls it, it’s a great exercise since it’s “almost impossible to win the one billion dollars.”  As he put it,

“1.  Nobody has ever picked a perfect bracket since inception years ago.”

“2.  It is almost-impossible to win the one billion dollars, especially with the rules of one entry per household… almost but not impossible.”

“3.  This is an intriguing thing for many but hopefully we don’t get too consumed with it.”

“4.  Warren Buffett, though an alleged sports fan who has himself filled out numerous failed brackets, probably did this to demonstrate that one has to work hard for their money.  One billion dollars is very difficult to get with just luck… This is not the lottery.”

The Rules

1. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER. A PURCHASE WILL NOT IMPROVE CHANCES OF WINNING.
2. Must be a legal resident of the 50 United States and DC,
3. Must 21 or older.
4. Must register and fill out bracket between March 3, 2014 and March 19, 2014.
5. One entry per household.
6. Fill out registration at http://QuickenLoansBracket.com
7. Grand Prize of $1 Billion for perfect bracket in 2014 college basketball tournament
8. (only available to first 10,000,000 registrants but, at its sole discretion, Sponsor reserves the right to expand the entry pool for the Grand Prize to a larger number of registrants);
9. Twenty (20) First Prizes of $100,000 each to the owners of the top twenty scoring brackets.
10. Winners determined after end of tournament.
11. Prize Conditions: Grand Prize payable over course of 40 years in annual payments of $25 million.
12. Grand Prize Winner may elect to receive a one-time payment of $500 million.
13. Odds: Grand Prize – 1:9,223,372,036,854,775,808, which may vary depending upon the knowledge and skill of entrant;
14. First Prize – odds of winning depend on number and quality of entries received.

If you still feel you will be one of those first 10 million entrants, go ahead and register.  It’s simple.  You may win one of those top 20 spots if nobody wins the billion.

What a thing if Lebron James or one of his Heat brethren is qualified to play and wins the billion dollars?  That would be something!  If you remember, Lebron James left Dan Gilbert’s team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, to play for the Miami Heat. What followed were some bitter words mostly in the form of a letter from Dan Gilbert.  I suppose they’ve made up since then.  After all, that was almost 4 years ago.