Local Man Celebrates 15th Straight Year of Perfect Retroactive March Madness Bracket

By Joe Matheson

NEW ORLEANS - As the 2022 NCAA Basketball Tournament ended on Monday evening, local man Bill Fuller was happy to announce the completion of his 15th consecutive perfect retroactive March Madness bracket, which he finished filling out at the conclusion of the championship game.

Fuller, 42, began filling out brackets retroactively 20 years ago as a way to keep track of the teams that were still in the tournament. Fuller says that his strategies provide a better reflection of reality, which he credits to his multi-year success.

"Most people I know are reckless with March Madness, filling out their brackets based on the team mascot, school color, or who they think would win the game," said Fuller, "I like my strategy more, it's based more on reality. Once the teams play each other, I look up who won between the two and write the team name down. I keep doing that until we end up with a champion. Simple as that."

"It's a lot to keep track of," Fuller continued, "there are a lot of game results that you need to look up."

Through the years after Fuller's first successful retroactive bracket back in 2001, the practice has turned into a passion. 

"There's really no wrong time to fill out a bracket. Sometimes, when I'm bored on a Friday night in the middle of June, I'll fill out the bracket from 1992. It really gets my energy going."

When asked if this strategy is considered cheating, Fuller balked at the notion. "I think my strategy is tried and true and I can't believe more people haven't adopted it yet. Really though, it's difficult. Sometimes if you're not paying attention, you can look up the wrong game and put someone down who didn't actually win in the tournament. That bit me hard, back in 2005."

Even still, Fuller isn't immune to looking up the wrong game. This year, his bracket was threatened by him accidentally recording the result of the Duke-UNC game from March 5th instead of the Final Four matchup. 

Thankfully for Fuller, the end result was the same.