A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 6
Okay, so nobody picked Duke vs. Butler in the NCAA hoops finals, right? But what if somebody did? In fact, what if somebody picked all the games correctly — with a chance to win an ungodly sum of cash? Check this:
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.”
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.
Okay, brainstorming possible movies, it sounds like a comedy, right? Some sports network ala ESPN offers $25M (or more) to anyone who can correctly guess every single NCAA basketball game correctly. Amazingly one person is en route to possibly doing it. Who might that Protagonist character be?
* Could be a Joe Six Pack sports fan from Jersey, whose story is a journey from slob to snob.
* How about a total non-jock brainiac teen who gets swept up in the fame game
* Maybe something ala The Front: The person who actually made the choices can’t legally take the winnings (e.g., illegal alien, under 18), so they make an agreement with someone to ‘stand in’ for them, then if they win will split the winnings. Things are going well until The Front starts getting a big head, but the real game guesser can’t make a public stink because they’d blow any chance to win all that money. Hijinks and mayhem ensue.
Whatever the story is, it’s a clean high concept. And can you imagine the media hype going into the Final Four and then the Championship Game if somebody stood to win the March Madness Pick ’Em Challenge? One basketball team always wins the NCAA championship every year, but nobody has ever guessed all the games. And what has come to be known as “bracketology” is a phenomenon millions of people are consumed with this time each year, so they’d certainly resonate with the story’s central conceit.
What about the impact all the attention would have on the Protagonist? Companies begging him/her for endorsements, guest on talk shows, YouTube videos about them. In this age of the cult of personality, here is someone on the verge of doing the impossible.
What would you do with this story conceit?
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Tomorrow another story idea in our series that runs daily through the month of April.