That was quick.
Four days into the three-week-long NCAA tournament, Warren Buffett won his bet that no entrant in a Quicken Loans contest would predict the winner of each game. Had someone been successful, his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. would have been responsible for paying a $1 billion prize as part of an insurance policy it sold to the lender.
Two upsets — Dayton's defeat of Ohio State on Thursday, and Mercer's victory Friday over Duke — wiped out 99 percent of the entries. When Memphis defeated George Washington on Friday night, the last of the perfect brackets was busted.
The contest was announced in January and proved a publicity bonanza for Buffett, 83, and Quicken Loans founder/Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert.
Calculating the exact odds of a perfect bracket is impossible, because picking the winner of a game isn't a random event like a coin flip, Buffett said.
Fisher: Let them stay
San Diego State coach Steve Fisher used his postgame news conference to complain about the NCAA's travel plans, saying he found it "disgraceful" that the loser between his team and New Mexico State was being sent home after the game, which went to overtime and ended near 11 p.m. Pacific time in Spokane.
Pointing out how late it was and that the Aggies had to gather their belongings after a loss before boarding a charter plane back to Las Cruces, N.M., Fisher said: "For the billions of dollars that we have here, for them not to find a way to accommodate these kids, the student-athletes. You can't tell me they couldn't find charter planes. And that's what they told me. I shouldn't have to call the NCAA and I did today, to say, 'Why?'
"… It's disgraceful. So, we can say we want to do all these things for the benefit of the student-athletes, but you play a game like we did tonight and you get to the airport at 1 in the morning? Come on."
