Autistic teen picks perfect bracket

HAMILROCK · #1 03-24-2010, 11:36 AM

need to sign this kid up to Cappersmall Dr. Jack!

By Eamonn Brennan

ESPN's Tournament Challenge is currently hosting 4.78 million -- yes, million -- 2010 NCAA tournament bracket entries. After two rounds, not a single one of them is perfect. But the feat has, miraculously enough, been accomplished.

Who did it? His name is Alex Herrman, and he's a 17-year-old student at Glenbrook South High School in Glenview, Ill., one of Chicago's north suburbs. Herrmann, who is autistic, picked all the wild upsets you and I didn't see happening. UNI over Kansas. Ohio over Georgetown. Cornell over Wisconsin. Your bracket may have survived. Your bracket might be good. Herrmann's bracket is 100 percent perfect.

"It's amazing," Hermann said. "I'm good at math. I'm kind of good at math and at stats I see on TV during the game."

Alex entered the bracket on CBSsports.com's bracket challenge. CBS did not return several phone calls to confirm entries into its game. His 24-year-old brother Andrew, who helped him enter his picks into CBS' bracket manager, also entered the contest -- and ranks behind 500,000 other people.

“My bracket is totally shot,” his 24-year-old brother Andrew said. “So is everyone else I know.”

Us too, Andrew. Us too.

In case you needed the visual proof, NBC Chicago has the PDF right here. Another fun fact: According to Book Of Odds, the chances of picking the first two rounds of this NCAA tournament are one in 13,460,000, which means you have a better chance of winning the lottery twice over.

Two rounds is incredibly impressive, obviously, but the next step is seeing if Alex's picks can go the distance. Can he complete the holy grail? Can he seal the perfect bracket? Herrmann's Final Four is a bit dubious -- he has Tennessee coming out of the Midwest and Purdue overcoming the Robbie Hummel injury to make it out of the South -- not to mention the fact that the odds of attaining a perfect bracket are 1 in 35,360,000,000. (Or, according to Book Of Odds, "almost 18 times worse than your odds of being killed by a waterspout in a year [1 in 1,988,000,000]." So, um, yeah.) But doubting Alex now means doubting the one person who managed to get the entire bracket correct. In other words, I'm not going to do it.