Every year basketball fans in the United States follow a number of tournaments, and one of them is March Madness — a tournament that involves men teams of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. The association was established at the beginning of the past century, and the tournament itself was held in 1939 for the first time.
In the beginning, there were only eight teams participating in the event. Nowadays, there are 68 teams from all over the US that play in March Madness. Round by round, teams leave the tournament until the Final Four is determined. These four teams compete for victory. Half of the participants are chosen by the Selection Committee every year; another half is qualified automatically. If you want to know more details about selection, check the association’s official site.
Nothing could stop the tournament until 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic happened. Before that, the games were held every year. In 2021, the tournament organizers plan to conduct all games in one place (again, due to the virus outbreak). We already know where: Indianapolis, Indiana.
Basketball lovers can watch the games on various TV channels; also, you can watch them online — visit the NCAA webpage to get a link.
Well, for starters, the tournament is held in March. Initially, this particular term was invented by a school worker Henry V. Porter in Illinois. He called the tournament like this when it was held for the first time in 1939. However, the term was blurred and forgotten.
But in 1982, things changed when journalists started to use this name here and there: it happened because of the famous CBS sportscaster Brent Musburger. Since then, March Madness is associated with this particular tournament.
It might be useful to know that the tournament is held for more than 80 years now, and 36 teams in different years have managed to win.
There is an absolute record-breaker, UCLA. This team from Los Angeles, California, has won the tournament 11 times. Ten of them were in a row, from the middle of sixties to the middle of seventies. The whole chart with all the winners year by year is available on the NCAA site.
Besides this team, there are other successful teams; for instance, good results throughout the tournament history have been shown by the following teams:
When all participants are announced, fans can take part in the Bracket Challenge Game and try to predict who will be the winner. A special fillable bracket exists for this. Basically, it is a traditional scheme used in team sports that is edited after every game of a tournament.
You have two sides with lines where you step by step put teams’ names and the winner for each match. The Final Four and the main winner will be placed in the middle of the page.
Experienced fans already know that you have a limited time to make your predictions. It is possible to complete your bracket from the moment when all the participating teams are selected until the day when the first game starts. So, you have to be fast.
If you still do not have any fillable NCAA bracket template to participate in the game, use our advanced form-building software to get it immediately. Another way to download the template is to visit the association’s website.
Other Charts and Tables
If you’d like to check more charts and tables documents that you can edit and fill out online, here are some of the more popular forms among our visitors. Besides that, do not forget that it is possible to upload, fill out, and edit any PDF at FormsPal.
No one has a secret that explains how to get a winning bracket. It is extremely hard, and the chances to win are quite low. Averagely, challenge winners in the last five years guess the outcome of 52 games.
Speaking of the chart with consecutive games predicted perfectly, the best result was demonstrated in 2019 by a fan from Ohio. He managed to select 49 games in a row from the start without a single mistake. No one could go so far before.
To encourage fans, NCAA has developed a separate webpage called the BracketIQ where challenge participants can find some tips, statistics throughout all the tournaments, and other useful information that may help to provide accurate predictions. You can also take two teams and calculate automatically how they have competed with each other in frames of the tournament.
However, even with this page, no one has gotten the perfect result yet. Statistically, you can get the ideal bracket once in 120 billion cases. So, it is quite interesting to see how gamers compete from year to year. Who knows, maybe one day we will finally see the winner.
Besides the page provided by the association, there are plenty of articles suggested by various sports media. All of them have a talking name like “10 tips to complete your NCAA bracket”. So, if you feel that the BracketIQ is not enough for you, you can try looking for additional hints on the internet, checking instructions provided by online media.
Some tips contain mathematics and computations; others recommend you watch the games and follow the tournament year by year. Obviously, this will not help you to guess every winner and win, but this is how you improve your expertise and become a professional watcher who can understand the strengths and weaknesses of all the teams performing.
The association accepts brackets only online. You have to visit its official site again, get a separate link there, register, and submit your template there. Remember about the deadline: once the games begin, you are not allowed to send your file anymore.
If you are a basketball fan who does not know anything about the tournament yet but wants to participate in the challenge, remember that it starts every year in March, and you have around a week to create your own bracket. We also suggest you read more about the tournament’s history, especially of the last couple of years. Try your luck, and maybe once you will be the one who gets all games’ results perfectly!
