While NCAA Tournament bracket pools have long dominated bars, offices, and every corner of the world where fine folks like to slap down a few pesos to make March more interesting, I am here to tell you a tale of an even deeper level of March Madness mayhem that combines breathtaking buzzer beaters and upsets with the w.

• The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, also known and branded as NCAA March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 college basketball teams from the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), to determine the national championship.
• Download the free printable NCAA basketball tournament bracket and office pool spreadsheet or PDF file to start and organize your NCAA final four pool game. In 2013, the NCAA Basketball Tournament begins with selection Sunday on March 17th, 2013.
• Everyone knows about the bracket pool, and no one has any trouble finding one. Offices, campuses, bars, and groups of friends always form them in March, and they are a lot of fun. However, these types of bracket pools are available at online gambling sites as well and can carry plenty of value for a well-researched college basketball fan.

Download our free 2020 March Madness Bracket Template to print blank brackets and track players' picks for your office pool or friendly competition. You'll also find single elimination and double elimination bracket templates for other tournaments you may be organizing or participating in. Continue reading to learn more about the features in each of these free tournament bracket templates, and find some helpful resources to help you organize tournaments.

NCAA 2020 March Madness Tournament Bracket

NOTE: We didn't created a 2020 bracket because March Madness was canceled. :-(
We'll update the bracket next year, though.

Use this 2020 NCAA College Basketball bracket to track the March Madness tournament. Enter the final scores for each game and the tournament bracket will automatically update until a champion is crowned.

Use the pool worksheet to help you run a friendly competition among your office or family. The office pool feature will automatically calculate points for each game and show who is currently leading. You can choose to have each player define all the picks at the start of the competition, or enter new picks after each round. You can also set up your own point system - awarding a different number of points for making correct picks in each round.

2011 NCAA Tournament Bracket - Men's Basketball (.pdf) - Example of a completed March Madness bracket using this spreadsheet.

License: Private Use (not for distribution or resale)

Download

License: Private Use (not for distribution or resale)

Description

The worksheet contains double-elimination brackets for tournaments that include anywhere from 3 to 16 teams as well as 20, 24, 30 and 32 teams. Each bracket includes the option to use tournament seeds or a random start. You can also hide or display the recommended game order to balance the playing load of any one team.

Download

License: Private Use (not for distribution or resale)

Description

This printable single-elimination bracket template includes a number of different sheets to support a wide number of teams, including any number between 3 and 16 as well as 20, 24, 30 and 32 teams. Each tournament bracket has the option to use tournament seeds and to display or hide game numbers.

Using the March Madness Bracket and Pool Template

After we upload the new bracket with the 2019 information, the bracket will be ready to go. Just enjoy the games and enter the final scores to keep the bracket updated.

1. To start an office pool, hand out copies of the bracket to participants and have them write in their bracket picks. Make sure you give them ample time to make their picks, even if it won't really help them do any better. :-)
2. Enter picks into the pool worksheet. Use the game numbers on the bracket and the table to line up the proper games.
3. Keep the bracket updated with scores and the pool will be updated too.
4. Consider placing the spreadsheet where everyone can see the current leaders.
5. Sit back and enjoy the tournament, and pray that your underdogs really do win.

Tips for Putting on a Tournament

• If you aren't sure how many teams you are going to have in your tournament, print out multiple brackets or print out a bracket that will handle them all.
• Use BYEs to fill in empty starting positions if teams fail to show up or the bracket is slightly larger than needed.
• Print the bracket on a large plotter (most copy centers will have one) if you want to post it for everyone to see. Or, use a projector and a laptop to display the bracket on a wall so that everyone can see how the tournament is progressing.
• Make sure you have ample time to complete your tournament, especially if court or field space is limited. A single drawn-out game can mess up an entire tournament schedule. Make sure you include enough time in between games to allow for the longer games.

More Printable Tournament Brackets

• Printable Tournament Brackets at printyourbrackets.com - Handy place to go print a quick bracket for nearly any sport and tournament type.
• Printable 2019 March Madness Bracket at ncaa.com - A blank PDF with teams listed.
• Official 2019 NCAA Tournament Bracket at ncaa.com - A place to get the latest information on the NCAA March Madness Tournament and print an updated bracket.

Additional Resources

• Official NCAA March Madness Page at ncaa.com - 2019 March Madness schedule and information about viewing the games live.

Related Content

Ncaa Pools For Money

March Madness pools are a form of sports betting based on the annual NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament each spring in the United States. The increasing interest in this event is fostered by March Madness pools, or brackets. A bracket is a form that can be completed on-line or printed out and completed by hand whereby the participant predicts the outcome of each game in the tournament. His or her predictions are compared against others in the pool, and whoever has the best prognostication skills wins the contest.

Background[edit]

Tournament bids[edit]

Sixty-eight (68) teams line up with a chance to win the national title. It is not just the best 68 teams from among the more than 350 teams that play Division Ibasketball, though. Teams are split into 32 conferences, and each of those conferences has an automatic bid. Every conference plays a season-ending conference tournament, and gives the automatic bid to the winner.^[1] The other 36 teams are chosen by a selection committee. They are called at-large bids, and they generally go to the 36 most deserving teams. It is difficult to pick the 36 best teams, and the process is very subjective and can be very controversial.

Seeds[edit]

The four lowest ranked automatic bid teams and the four lowest ranked at-large teams in the tournament play in special play-in games called the First Four before the tournament.^[2] The rest of the field is split into four regions of 16 teams, and those regions are seeded from one to 16. The top team in each region plays the 16th team, the second plays the 15th and so on. The winners of each game goes on to the next round and so on until only one team is standing. A team is knocked out of the tournament and has to go home as soon as they lose once, so the pressure is incredibly intense.

Different Types Of Ncaa Tournament Pools

Timeframe[edit]

The tournament takes place over three weekends starting soon after the middle of March.

Ncaa Tournament Bracket

Brackets[edit]

Perhaps the biggest key to the tremendous popularity of the tournament is the bracket. The March Madness bracket is the grid of all the teams in the tournament and the path they have to follow to the Final Four and the championship game. Filling out a bracket with the winners of each of the 63 games is an incredibly difficult task, and nobody has successfully filled out a perfect bracket. If games were 50/50 propositions, the chances of a bracket being perfect are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (9.2 quintillion).^[3]Some March Madness contests are free to enter, others require an entry fee. Many businesses utilize pool hosting services to run their pools, allowing them the flexibility to customize the pool rules and display.

Free Ncaa Bracket Pools

Popularity[edit]

Ncaa Basketball Tournament

March Madness has become one of the most popular sporting events in the United States.^[4][5] Because of the length of the tournament and the number of teams involved it is one of the most popular sporting events in terms of television ratings. One event associated with March Madness is filling out the brackets. It has become extremely common in popular culture, even among non-sports fans; it is estimated that tens of millions of Americans participate in the contest every year. Mainstream media outlets such as ESPN, CBS Sports, Fox Sports and TheBigTourney.com host tournaments online where contestants can enter for free. Employers have also noticed a change in the behavior of employees during this time: they have seen an increase in the number of sick days used, extended lunch breaks and even the rescheduling of conference calls to allow for more tournament watching.^[6] There are also many handicappers and pundits which offer advice for winning your bracket.^[7][8]

References[edit]

1. ^Explanation of March Madness
2. ^'Bracketology with Joe Lunardi'. ESPN.com. January 12, 2015. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
3. ^Szczerba, Robert J. 'Bracketology 101: Picking A Perfect Bracket Is Actually Easier Than You Think'. Forbes. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
4. ^Geiling, Natasha (March 20, 2014). 'When Did Filling Out A March Madness Bracket Become Popular?'. Smithsonian. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
5. ^Deford, Frank (March 9, 2011). 'What makes March Madness so popular? Its knockout nature'. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
6. ^Petrecca, Laura (March 15, 2012). 'March Madness in the Office: Work Come in Second'. USA Today. Retrieved July 21, 2013.
7. ^Trotter, Ryan (March 18, 2013). 'Geeks Can Win March Madness Pools'. Retrieved March 10, 2014.
8. ^Boudway, Ira (March 18, 2013). 'How to Win Your March Madness Pool'. Business Week. Retrieved July 21, 2013.

Further reading[edit]

• Adams T (2018). Improving Your NCAA Bracket with Statistics. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
• Feng E (2016). How to Win Your NCAA Tournament Pool. The Power Rank, Inc.
• Poundstone W (2014). Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody. Little, Brown and Company.