This Is Just Awesome

Study the above bracket for a second. Click on it to see a clearer, enlarged version of it.

I love this kind of shit. And this is just flat-out awesome.

Given the number of upsets we had in this tourney, surely you would think no one had a perfect bracket. None of the 4.78 million who entered their bracket on ESPN did. But as you can see above, one bracket was perfect. This is the pre-tournament filled out by 17-year old Alex Herrmann. Up to this point, there is not a single mistake on it.

Now I know what you are thinking at this point. Surely this is a joke, right? Surely this was just some goofball kid who entered this as a joke or some hardcore UNI hardcore UNI bandwagon fan who does not know shit about college basketball outside his own team, right? After all, how could you possibly seriously have UNI and Cornell in the Sweet 16 AND on top of all that to have upsets of Ohio beating Georgetown and to go against the grain and not pick the upset of Siena over Purdue, something every upset-minded person thought would happen? Whatever it is you think, you are probably wrong. Unless of course you guessed that Alex Herrmann is a teenager with autism and this bracket is a 100% serious attempt by Herrmann who has memorized stats like, frankly, only autistic savants can. NBC Chicago has more about this and more about Alex.

he picked every game through the first two rounds correctly. The odds of anybody doing that? One in 13,460,000, according to BookofOdds.com. It's easier to win the lottery. Twice.

"I'm good at math," Alex, a Glenbrook South High School student, said. "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. 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,” hist 24-year-old brother Andrew said. “So is everyone else I know."

ESPN estimates around 4.78 million played in their bracket challenge, but no one picked all the games correctly. The leader at ESPN’s bracket has already missed four games.

But Alex Hermann's miraculous bracket is still a picture of perfection.

Andrew is still shocked --- after looking it over for the umpteenth time, he told his mother to alert the media.

"I checked his bracket and it was off the chart," Andrew said. "I thought it was big deal."

Alex doesn't get anything for perfection. He entered one of three bracket games offered by CBS -- the only one without a prize attached.

Alex’s basketball knowledge could have been worth a fortune. One of the other CBS games offers a prize of $5,000 per round. Other sites offer even more money -- Yahoo offers $1 million for a perfect bracket; SportsBook.com offers $13 million.

“If he would have won any money he would have just saved it,” his mother Diane said. "He's a big saver."

Of course, everyone wants to know Alex’s secret. He says there's none.

"I watched each team this year and saw the size of the player and looked at the stats," Alex said.

There are still four rounds remaining, so it could fall apart -- the odds of a perfect wire to wire bracket is about 1 in 35,360,000 by some measures or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 by others.

Alex picked Purdue to win the whole thing. That just happens to be his brother’s alma mater.

“They’re his favorite for that reason, Diane said. Or maybe he knows something no one else does.

CBS did not return several phone calls to confirm Alex's entry -- and the software does allow changes after the tournament begins. But the Hermann's insisted that they filled out their brackets as a family before the tournament started, and haven't touched the picks since.

How amazing is that?

Right now I am thinking that every Purdue fan alive that has learned about this are instantly going to Las Vegas to bet their life savings on the Boilermakers.

And just like that this tournament has an added layer of drama now that we've got a perfect bracket through the first two rounds. I'll be sure to keep an extra eye on it as we go through the rest of this tournament and I will try to alert you if any team were to upset young Alex Herrmann's perfection.