For the fifth year in a row, there is no grand-prize winner of Warren Buffett’s million-dollar NCAA bracket challenge.
The last eight employees of Berkshire Hathaway and its subsidiaries who remained in contention were eliminated on Friday when Marshall beat Wichita State. As he has since 2014, Warren Buffett offered $1 million every year for life to the person who could correctly predict the outcomes of all games through the Sweet 16 (this year the prize rose to $2 million if a Nebraska team took home the trophy).
There is a consolation prize though. The eight employees whose brackets stayed intact the longest will split $100,000. Sharing the prize this year are a diverse group representing the breadth of Berkshire Hathaway’s interests: Joseph Maciejko of General Reinsurance, Mike Bills of International Metalworking Companies, Keith Franks of Charter Brokerage, Kevin Hessel of the Nebraska Furniture Mart, Ed King of BNSF Railway, Adam Senese of Pampered Chef, Alexander Sorenson of Marmon Holdings, and Chad Yokoyama of BNSF.
These weren’t the only eight brackets that busted on Friday night. The NCAA announced that the tens of millions of brackets submitted online through different websites were all broken when 16th-seeded University of Maryland-Baltimore County’s beat top-seeded Virginia. According to MarketWatch, the odds of correctly predicting all 48 games in the first round are 1 in 280 billion.