The NCAA Basketball Tournament, also known as March Madness, is one of the most anticipated events of the year in sports. Basketball enthusiasts can look forward to three weekends of NCAA madness this year. As usual, participation in the NCAA games is expected to be huge and will invite a massive crowd from across the country. Here’s everything to know about this event, including printable brackets.

Event information
Around 136 large and small schools nationwide are participating in this tournament.

Around 134 elimination games will be played on neutral courts to win the national championship at the end of the tournament. The games are on until April 8th, and news agencies and social media will heavily cover them, so viewers are bound to not miss any details. This is also when many people fill out their brackets for the game. Let’s understand what that is.

Filling out the March Madness bracket
If one is new to filling out brackets, here are a few details to acquaint oneself with before starting. According to statistics, the odds of filling out a March Madness men’s tournament bracket where one can correctly predict the winner of every game are 1 in 9.2 quintillion. There is little chance; however, the incentives to win are also big. No one has completed a verifiably perfect bracket, but maybe one could get lucky. So here’s how it goes:

• All the teams are placed within a bracket and face off against an opponent.
• Opponents are based on seeding.
• The teams face off in a single-elimination game. If they win, they advance in the tournament; if they lose, they do not get second chances.

The official NCAA website allows one to download brackets for men and women. Viewers can either simply sign up and fill out the bracket virtually on the NCAA’s website or even get a printout from the website and fill it out physically. Once they have filled out the bracket, viewers can watch the games live to see how well they are progressing with the predictions.

There are also upset wins during the tournament, which means that a stronger team may sometimes lose to a weaker team, which may happen every time. The NCAA has some data they have collected over time to help pick these upsets correctly and fill the brackets more successfully.

Seeds
Here’s what one needs to know about seeds:

Some qualifying teams—32, to be specific—have won their respective conference championship tournaments and earned automatic bids. The appropriate NCAA committee selects these. These teams earn a “seed” from 1 to 16—1 being the best. So remember: the higher the seeds, the weaker the team, and the lower the team, the stronger the team. The best seeds play against each other in the regional branch of the bracket. Four regions are made up of match-ups, which are selected during Selection Sunday.

This year, the NCAA announced the top four seeds for the men’s tournament: Uconn, Houston, Purdue, and North Carolina. They announced the four number-one seeds for the women’s tournament, including South Carolina, Iowa, USC, and Texas.

Statistics about NCAA brackets and viewing
According to Forbes statistics, legalized sports wagering, office pools, personal bets, and unlicensed venues revealed that an estimated $15.5 billion was bet on the outcomes of the 134 games last year.

Statistics revealed that 63% of office workers will fill out the March Madness bracket with their colleagues this year, even though the odds, as mentioned above, they are 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

Regarding viewing, it is understood that 51% of those working will watch the tournament at the workplace, 74% of hybrid workers will tune into the tournament, and 61% of the remote workers will also watch the tournament from wherever they are. In the past, close to 19% of workers have admitted to calling in sick during March Madness to watch the tournaments.

For those working from the office, 44% will watch the tournament on their computer, 23% on their phones, and 10% on office television with their co-workers.

Timeline of matches
Throughout the three weekends, the first phase will be Selection Sunday, when the NCAA will reveal the whole NCAA tournament bracket to the public, including all the teams and the seeds. This will be followed by the First Four, then the First Round, Second Round, Sweet 16, Elite Eight, and Final Four. The final game will be the NCAA Championship game.

The men’s final four and championship game will be held at State Farm Stadium near Phoenix, and the women’s final four and championship game will be held at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland. Cleveland will be hosting a game for the first time, so that’s a new location for the players.