I wanted to enter the NCAA Contest to win a BILLION dollars, I have done the brackets for many years, but, apparently, NOT THIS YEAR ....... I tried, had to answer questions about a home loan and needed by cell number, which I don't have .... so, not this year ..... because .......
by Todd Kehoe
On Sunday, the NCAA will select the 68 teams that will play for the college basketball championship. And on Monday, you might be spending some time thinking about which teams are going to win the 63 games of the NCAA tournament.
Filling out tournament bracket sheets is a time-honored tradition for people who are rooting on their alma mater or who love the game. This year, though, there's a mind-boggling pot of gold at the end of the NCAA rainbow. Warren Buffett has teamed up with Quicken Loans to offer $1 billion to anyone who submits a perfect bracket online with Yahoo Sports.
Yes, that's a B-B-B-billion. On paper, it looks amazing, especially since you can sign up for free. But how good of a deal is it really? Here are four things to think about before you go diving in to the Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge. It's free, but comes with a cost
There is no cost to signing up to play for the challenge, but there are strings attached.
To sign up, you need a Yahoo account. And to get registered, you need to give Quicken your email address, cellphone number and answer a few questions about your mortgage. That's the minimum; Quicken hopes you'll opt-in for more advertising potential.
Quicken and Yahoo want to be assured the person submitting is old enough to be in the contest and can be reached if he or she wins. But it's also a marketing gold mine, says Dave Vener, an executive with the merging Smith & Jones/Burst Marketing firm in Troy, N.Y.
With the cap on the contest set at 15,000,000 entrants, that's potentially 15 million new email addresses and cellphone numbers the company has in fresh contacts.
I used to enjoy it, looked forward to it, was going to start my usual "pool."
