PANAMA CITY — Marc MacLean’s bracket might not be perfect, but it is one in 11 million.
The 29-year-old former Mosley High School athlete is currently tied for first place in ESPN’s NCAA Tournament Challenge, one of many online pick-em contests that feature predicting the winner of each game. More than 11 million users entered the ESPN contest and MacLean vaulted from No. 11 to one of two leaders after Sunday’s games.
“I didn’t go into it expecting much, just being the top of my local pool,” MacLean said. “It’s been cool, people have been contacting me and messing me about it. The pressure is on now.”
(Click here to see MacLean's bracket)
MacLean’s entry, MARC’S MADNESS, has a Florida-Wisconsin championship game with the Gators picked to win by four points. Seven of his Elite Eight teams are still playing with Kansas the lone loss. He was incorrect on only three Round of 64 games, missing out on Duke, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
He made up for the Duke miss by correctly predicting Tennessee’s spot in the Sweet 16. His Final Four matchups of Florida-Michigan State and Wisconsin-Kentucky are still possibilities. The tied bracket also has seven of the Elite Eight teams still playing and several of those tied for third have all eight alive.
MacLean, an engineer who’s steeped in mathematical equations and statistics on a daily basis, said he researched the field prior to filling out his brackets the day before the tournament began last week. He considered factors such as national rankings, roster makeup, how close the site was to the team’s home court and seeding.
“I knew a lot of the teams, I read the blurbs about each, looked at their matchups,” MacLean said. “Statistics are huge. Once you get to the Sweet 16 you should have at least one team at 11 seed or lower.
“They were educated guesses. I wasn’t just pulling them out of a hat. All that being said, it’s really all dumb luck.”
MacLean, who played for Mosley’s 2002 baseball state championship team, also was in the top 15 at CBSSports.com before one of his Final Four teams, Creighton, was knocked out of the draw late Sunday. He’s tied for 88th in the CBS contest with his personal bracket and one he combined to fill out with his father for a group with a minimal payout built from competitor contributions.
There’s no monetary prize for the CBS or ESPN contests. Entries that are in the top one percent in ESPN will be placed into a drawing for a $10,000 Best Buy gift card. That means MacLean could win the pool and still be left out of a prize.
MacLean said he would be excited if this upcoming weekend finished as well as the first. However, he admitted staying atop the ESPN contest would be bittersweet.
He attempted to enter the Yahoo Sports contest, which was sponsored by Quicken Loans and included a Warren Buffet offer of $1 billion to anyone who could come up with a perfect bracket. The contest was capped at 15 million participants and MacLean was left out.
No perfect brackets remain, but the top 20 finishers each receive $100,000. If it holds up, MacLean’s bracket would surely have been in contention for one of those slots.
“I’d love to win and have the top bracket and a chance at the gift card,” MacLean said. “But if that happened it may make me lose a little sleep at night since I missed out on the Yahoo bracket.”