2026 Tournament Schedule

Pre-Tournament Events

March 15: Teams Announced @ 5:00 PM [CST] on CBS
March 17-18: Four Play-In Games
March 19: Entry Deadline @ 11:30 AM [CST]

First Weekend of the Tournament
March 19-20: Round One - 64 Teams
March 21-22: Round Two - 32 Teams

Second Weekend of Games
March 26-27: Round Three - 16 Teams
March 28-29: Round Four - 8 Teams

Championship Weekend
April 4: Round Five - Semi-Finals - 4 Teams
April 6: Round Six - Championship - 2 Teams

NCAA. (2025). NCAA Division I Men’s Tournament Dates (2026).  

https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2025-06-12/2026-march-madness-mens-ncaa-tournament-schedule-dates

29th OfficePool64 Bracket Challenge Kicks Off

 March Madness is officially here! The brackets are set, excitement is building, and it's time to jump into the action with the 29th annual OfficePool64 Bracket Challenge. Whether you're a seasoned bracket veteran or filling out your very first picks, everyone has a chance at glory. Invite your friends, family, and colleagues, and let's see who can predict their way to bracket brilliance!

• Deadline: Thursday, March 20 @ 12:30 PM (EST)
• Max Brackets: Limit of 10 per person
• Website: CBS Sports Bracket Manager
• Bracket Name: Office Pool 64

Returning players: Simply log in to your existing CBS Sports account and submit your picks.

Newcomers: Quickly create an account with CBS Sports Bracket Manager and jump right in.
 
Remember, the first game tips off Thursday, so don’t delay—fill out your bracket today!

Good luck, and looking forward to another exciting year!

2025 Printable Office Pool Bracket

 

2025 Tournament Schedule

 Pre-Tournament Events

March 16: Teams Announced @ 5:00 PM [CST] on CBS
March 18-19: Four Play-In Games
March 20: Entry Deadline @ 11:30 AM [CST]

First Weekend Of The Tournament
March 20-21: Round One - 64 Teams
March 22-23: Round Two - 32 Teams

Second Weekend Of Games
March 27-28: Round Three - 16 Teams
March 29-30: Round Four - 8 Teams

Championship Weekend
April 5: Round Five - Semi-Finals - 4 Teams
April 7: Round Six - Championship - 2 Teams

NCAA Division I Men's Tournament Dates (2025).
Retrieved from https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2024-05-03/2025-march-madness-mens-ncaa-tournament-schedule-dates

28th Office Pool 64 Bracket Challenge Begins

The NCAA basketball tournament pairings have just been announced, and we are excited to announce the launch of our 28th annual Office Pool 64 Challenge.
   
Last year, we transitioned to CBS Sports Bracket Manager as our pool host, as our previous tournament software is no longer available. There were a few glitches on their site last year, resulting in some of you losing your brackets entirely. Hopefully, they have bolstered their bandwidth to accommodate the increased traffic this year.
   
Our bracket contest officially kicks off at 12:30 AM (EST) on Thursday, March 21st. If you participated last year, simply log in with your existing account and proceed to fill out your bracket. For newcomers, please create a user account with CBS Sports Bracket Manager and submit your brackets. You will have the flexibility to edit your brackets and monitor your progress throughout the tournament using their mobile app or your home PC.
      

• Deadline: 12:30 AM (EST) on Thursday, March 21
• Entry Fee: $0 per bracket
• Website:  CBS Sports Bracket Manager
• Bracket Name: Office Pool 64

2024 Tournament Schedule

Pre-Tournament Events

March 17: Teams Announced @ 5:00 PM [CST] on CBS
March 19-20: Four Play-In Games
March 21: Entry Deadline @ 11:30 AM [CST]

First Weekend Of The Tournament
March 21-22: Round One - 64 Teams
March 23-24: Round Two - 32 Teams

Second Weekend Of Games
March 28-29: Round Three - 16 Teams
March 30-31: Round Four - 8 Teams

Championship Weekend
April 6: Round Five - Semi-Finals - 4 Teams
April 8: Round Six - Championship - 2 Teams

NCAA Division I Men's Tournament Dates (2024).
Retrieved from https://www.ncaa.com/march-madness/schedule

2023 Office Pool 64 Bracket Challenge Returns

Get ready for the 27th annual OfficePool64 Bracket Challenge!
   
The NCAA basketball tournament pairings have just been announced, and we are excited to announce the launch of our Bracket Challenge. This year, we will be using CBS Sports Bracket Manager to host our pool contest, as our old software website is no longer available.
   
Our bracket contest officially begins at tipoff, 11:30 AM on Thursday, Marc 16. To enter, please create a user account with CBS Sports Bracket Manager, then submit your brackets. You will now be able to edit your brackets, plus track your progress throughout the tournament using their phone app, or from your home PC. 
   

• Deadline: 11:30 AM on Thursday, March 16
• Website: CBS Sports Bracket Manager
• Bracket Name: Office Pool 64

The first game that matters is this Thursday! So make sure to get all your pick sheets entered before tip-off to secure your spot in this year's competition.

2023 Office Pool Bracket

 

2023 Tournament Schedule

Pre-Tournament Events
March 12: Teams Announced @ 5:00 PM [CST] on CBS
March 14-15: Four Play-In Games
March 16: Entry Deadline @ 11:30 AM [CST]

First Weekend Of The Tournament
March 16-17: Round One - 64 Teams
March 18-19: Round Two - 32 Teams

Second Weekend Of Games
March 23-24: Round Three - 16 Teams
March 25-26: Round Four - 8 Teams

Championship Weekend
April 1: Round Five - Semi-Finals - 4 Teams
April 3: Round Six - Championship - 2 Teams

NCAA Division I Men's Tournament Dates (2023).
Retrieved from https://www.ncaa.com/march-madness/schedule

 

The 2022 OP64 Winner Is....

After the first half of the game, I thought the game was over and North Carolina would win. They were dominating, looked quick, and were playing defense to win the first half. That all changed in the second half and Kansas playing defense, looked quicker, and dominated the second half to win the Tournament Championship.

• Final Score: Kansas 72, North Carolina 69 - 141 points

Winning our contest this year is Randy S Page. I see their name entered every year, with just a few entries each time. They had an incredible 68% pick rate! Second best was 65%

Congratulations Randy !!

1st - Randy S Page - (144 pts)
2nd - Harvey Harris - (143 pts, 62% pick percentage)
3rd - Jake - (143 pts, 60% pick percentage)
4th - Jerome Lewis - (140 pts)
5th - Pat K - (137 pts)
6th - William TJ - (136 pts, 161 tie breaker)
7th - AJ Wood - (136 pts pts, 110 tie breaker)
8th - Duvalst 18 - (134 pts)
9th - Duvalst 1 - (133 pts)
10th - Duvalst 3 - (132 pts)

Congratulations to all of the winners!

     ** Next Year's Pool Update

I pains me to say this, after 26 years of running this bracket contest, next year's contest is up in the air.

I use Turbo Tourney Software to run the office pool contest and incorporate the standings into my website. The coder of the software is retiring, and he sold his company to another office pool company. So the way I am able to run this tournament and add the standings to my website is done. This was the final year for that.

I certainly want to keep running this pool going forward, this is one of my hobbies and I enjoy doing this. I've looked at a few options for next year, but all of them require you to login to another website and we join a group pool together. I don't know if I can incorporate the standings into my website, but maybe that's no longer needed.

So, big changes for next year unfortunately. I hope you all come along for the next version, whatever form it takes. Maybe I call it quits too, I just don't know right now. 

If you have any office pool suggestions, or other pool sites you've used that you like and may work here, please drop me a message at

Championship Weekend Is Here

Basketball starts back up on Saturday, with the championship game concluding the tournament Monday night. They have their dream match up for Coach K, plus many more story lines to bring in viewers this year. Kansas, Villanova, Duke, North Carolina are the remaining teams. 

There are eight brackets in our office pool this year, that correctly selected three of the final four teams. Nobody predicted all four teams, but that doesn't happen that often, unless a lot of number one seeds make it this far. 

Saturday's Games

• Villanova vs Kansas - 6:09 (CBS)
• Duke vs North Carolina - 8:49 (TBS)

Monday's Game

• Winner vs Winner - 9:00 (CBS)

** All times are US/Eastern

And Then There Was Sixteen

For this years office pool, we have 366 pick sheets entered into the bracket contest. In 2021, we had 359. In 2019, there was 367. The Standings are current, with the links above to see where you rank.

With the second round of games ending last weekend, the Players Scenarios link is now live. This calculates your best and worst finish, plus lets you know who you need to root for to get your best finish.

The Sweet Sixteen round of games starts back up this evening. We have four games on Thursday, four games on Friday to complete the third round. 

Thursday's Games

• Gonzaga vs Arkansas - 7:09 (CBS)
• Villanova vs Michigan - 7:29 (TBS)
• Duke vs Texas Tech - 9:39 (CBS)
• Arizona vs Houston - 9:59 (TBS)

Friday's Games

• Purdue vs St Peters - 7:09 (CBS)
• Kansas vs Providence - 7:29 (TBS)
• UCLA vs N Carolina - 9:39 (CBS)
• Miami (FL) vs Iowa St - 9:59 (TBS)

** All times are US/Eastern

Standings Updated After Round One

Greetings everyone! Thank you to everyone who submitted pick sheets this year. We ended up with 366 pick sheets in the 2022 bracket contest. The first round has ended, the standings are updated and I hope you caught the Baylor vs North Carolina game. Baylor was down by 25, came back to tie it up, but fell short in the overtime session. So, that means we have lost our first #1 seeded team of the tournament.

If you are new to this office pool, the standings update once per hour, on the hour, after games have completed.

If you have any questions, you can always email be at anytime. Enjoy this great weekend of basketball and good luck to everyone!

2022 OfficePool64 Bracket Challenge Begins

Entries are now being accepted for the 26th Bracket64 Challenge. If you are participating in this years contest, please have all your pick sheets submitted by tip-off of the first game on Thursday.

The pairings were announced just minutes ago and the 2022 Bracket64 Challenge is underway. Once again there are 68 teams selected in the official tournament bracket. However, we will start out contest when they are down to 64 teams. Our first game that matters this year is back to Thursday!! 

DEADLINE: March 17 @ 12:30 AM [ET]
ENTRY FEE: $0.00 per pick sheet

Enter Your Picks Here

Bracket Notes

• Make sure you hit the SUBMIT PICKS BUTTON at the bottom of the bracket page, or your picks will not be entered into the pool.
• If you are submitting more than one bracket, please place a number after your name to make it unique, or it will overwrite your submitted pick sheet. Example: Timmy 1, Timmy 2, Timmy 3

Printable Office Pool Bracket

If you want to figure your bracket on paper first, like I always do, I have a printable bracket available in PDF format using Adobe Reader, plus a graphic version as well. The PDF version prints out bigger, I recommend to grab that one first. 

2022 Printable Office Pool Bracket - PDF

2022 Printable Office Pool Bracket - HTML

 

2022 Tournament Schedule

Pre-Tournament Events
March 13: Teams Announced @ 5:00 PM [CST] on CBS
March 15-16: Four Play-In Games
March 17: Entry Deadline @ 11:30 AM [CST]

First Weekend Of The Tournament
March 17-18: Round One - 64 Teams
March 19-20: Round Two - 32 Teams

Second Weekend Of Games
March 24-25: Round Three - 16 Teams
March 26-27: Round Four - 8 Teams

Championship Weekend
April 2: Round Five - Semi-Finals - 4 Teams
April 4: Round Six - Championship - 2 Teams

NCAA Division I Men's Tournament Dates (2022).
Retrieved from https://www.ncaa.com/march-madness/schedule

 

Our 2021 Office Pool Winner Is....

It felt like the game was over after the first five minutes of the championship game. Baylor dominated. Their defense, rebounding, shooting, speed, everything they did crushed Gonzaga. The Zags did get it to a single digit game with 8-9 minutes to go, and they had to work just to get to that point. It was not an exciting final game to say the least.

 
But we do have a winner for the 2021 OfficePool64 Bracket Challenge. Congratulations goes out to Edward Rhoads of Carmel, Indiana. Obviously selected Baylor to win it all, but he also had the highest pick percentage at 71% correctly picked.

Here are this year's Top Ten pick sheets.

Edward Rhoads - 176
Jim Richards - 158
Randy Laird - 156
John G Chorlian - 147
Sean P Kelly - 145
Garry Tapfer - 145
Cory Vogel - 145
Lance Shannon - 145
www.ganza.com - 144
Randy Page 9 - 143

The website is having issues again. If you get a blank page, just stop it from loading and you'll see the text. The graphics are not being loaded right now.

Any how, thank you all for participating and we will see you in 2022!!

And Then There Were Four, Ummmm Teams

We are here, we are down to the four teams: Gonzaga, Baylor, UCLA, Houston. No one predicted these final four teams, but quite a few of you selected three of four teams.

As odd as the tournament schedule has been this year, the final weekend of games plays out like it always does on Saturday and Monday. Saturday's tipoff is 5:14 ET with Baylor and Houston the first game. Gonzaga and UCLA is the second game with an approximate tipoff time of 8:34 ET. Both games are on CBS.

With only three games remaining, there are eight tournament scenarios that can happen. Here are the current links for those outcomes:
 

If Gonzaga beats Baylor
If Baylor beats Gonzaga
If Gonzaga beats Houston
If Houston beats Gonzaga
If UCLA beats Baylor
If Baylor beats UCLA
If UCLA beats Houston
If Houston beats UCLA
 

Good luck to those who are still in it.

Second Weekend Games Begins Saturday

The tournament games will finally start back up on Saturday at 1:40 PM. I don't see it noted if it's Eastern or Central time zone, so check your local listings for the exact start time.

So this week, rounds three and four will playout over Saturday through Tuesday! Kind of reminds me of what the NFL did with their schedule this past year, not playing on their normally scheduled days we've all gotten accustom too.

For this years OfficePool64 Bracket Challenge, we have 359 people in the office pool. Which is on pace from 2019 when we had 367 people playing. Now that round two is completed, the Player Scenarios link is now live. It takes several hours to calculate this link as there are right around 32,000 possibilities remaining in the standings.

I have had some quirkiness happening with my webhost, which started Monday evening. I couldn't get the standings to upload onto the webhost. It was timing out before it could get started. This also happened Wednesday into Thursday. So if the standings links were acting strange during the week for you, it was the host server acting up. If this does happen again, I'll make the standings available on my OneDrive. I believe that would work as a backup plan.

So Good To Have This Tournament Back

Welcome back to everyone who has been here before and greetings to all the new people.

Just a quick email to this years participants to let you know the standings are live and updating once per hour, at the top of the hour, after games have completed.

There are no perfect brackets remaining, and 14 of 16 is tops at this point. Way too early for your bracket to be busted, unless you had Ohio State as a final four team.

If you have any questions, you can always email me at anytime. So, enjoy this great weekend of basketball and good luck to everyone.

2021Bracket Challenge Returns!!

It feels so good to say this....

Entries are finally being accepted for the 25th OfficePool64 Bracket Challenge. We skipped over the 24th contest, obviously due to Covid-19 and the tournament being canceled, and are now at the milestone of  our 25th season. I can still count this as my 25th season, right?

The pairings were announced just minutes ago and the 2021 Bracket Challenge is underway. Once again there are 68 teams selected in the official tournament bracket. However, we will start out contest when they are down to 64 teams. The four play-in games are on Thursday this year and tip-off is on a Friday! Yes, tip-off is on a Friday this year and the rest of the schedule is off by a day from what we are used too. 

DEADLINE: Tip-Off, March 19 @ 12:30 PM [EST]
ENTRY FEE: None

Enter Your Picks Here

Bracket Notes

• Make sure you hit the SUBMIT PICKS BUTTON at the bottom of the bracket page, or your picks will not be entered into the pool.
• If you are submitting more than one bracket, please place a number after your name to make it unique, or it will overwrite your submitted pick sheet. Example: Timmy 1, Timmy 2, Timmy 3

Printable Office Pool Bracket

If you want to figure your bracket on paper first, like I always do, I have a printable bracket available in PDF format using Adobe Reader, plus a graphic version as well. The PDF version prints out bigger, I recommend to grab that one first. 

2021 Printable March Madness Bracket - PDF

2021 Printable March Madness Bracket - Graphic