One would think that printing out an NCAA bracket would be an easy task, but those people are rookies. No offense.

Those fans familiar with filling out March Madness brackets over the years know that not all brackets are created (or designed) equal. Some of it is preference and other times, it’s knowing what’s available and worth your time and effort downloading and printing. Yes, it’s low effort, but why not get the most from the get-go? Let’stake a look at a couple examples of the three types of printable brackets you’ll encounter when you’re searching on the internet.

Empty, Blank NCAA Tournament Brackets

Blank NCAA tournament brackets are exactly as they sound. They’re empty and primed to be customized. Blank NCAA tournament brackets are at most, a basic NCAA tournament bracket with spaces for 64 teams with little to no other information. There’s definitely no teams and usually no seedings in these brackets. Here’s one example of an empty bracket for you to chew on:

These are essentially empty brackets as empty brackets would look like;  just a bunch of straight lines interconnected, prepped and ready to be personalized by its owner. Take a look at a few examples of blank brackets that Interbasket has produced. If you want to download and print out the versions, keep scrolling.

Print out a NCAA Tournament blank bracket in PDF format

Seeded, Filled Out NCAA Brackets with Team Information

The next version of bracket you’ll see are the ones that are filled out for the opening and first round. This can only be done after the NCAA Selection Committee has chosen all the college programs that will be participating in the 2019 tournament. The biggest difference between these brackets and the empty blank bracket above is most of these brackets have all 68 teams seeded and typed into their proper places no the bracket.

That means, for example that the team chosen as the #3 seed will be playing the team selected as the #14 seed in their appropriate place in each quarter of the bracket.

With all the 68 available tickets punched for the tournament, these filled and seeded brackets seem like they have all the information you need in one bracket. What else does one need other than a bracket with all the first round teams from the #1 seeds in the 2019 tourney to the First Four printed in?  From there, the bracket owner can accurately write in the winners and has all the information they need.

Complete NCAA Brackets with Seeds, Game Times and Dates

Except that it’s not all the game information that is out there and not all the game information that fits into a bracket. Those advanced March Madness brackets downloaded by college basketball veterans not only have a well-spaced, decently-designed bracket with all the seeded teams, but also have the associated game times and locations of that particular region (when applicable). We consider these as truly complete NCAA brackets. There’s no more information to be had nor can be fit into a paper printed on a regular-sized paper dimensions of 8.5 x 11 inches.

Here’s an example of what we refer to as complete brackets:

Yep, we only have one example of a complete bracket. Look at the unusual shape of this bracket compared to the normal landscape rectangle we normally see from printed out NCAA brackets in PDF. It needs to be that shape in order to fit all the requisite NCAA schedule information: dates, times, region information seeding (and sometimes TV info) all jam packed in a 64-team bracket. Due to all that information, there’s not a lot of these complete bracket out in the wild.

We’re not saying that there’s not my iterations of brackets, not at all. We don’t want to seem arrogant, but we like to believe we’ve become experts in brackets and these are the three categories of NCAA brackets that we’ve run across the most on the internet. Depending on your requirements and expectations of your bracket, we’ve provided some great brackets in each of those buckets for this year’s March Madness bracket games. Enjoy