Bracket
Diagram of tournament games
Example
Did you fill out a bracket this year?
Yeah, I did 14 of them
Wowzers
Related Slang
Bracketology | Predicting who will win a tournament |
Bracket buster | A team that upsets a highly ranked team |
March Madness | NCAA Basketball Tournament |
Final Four | Last four competitors |
Sweet Sixteen | Last 16 teams in a tournament |
Elite Eight | Last eight teams of March Madness |
Cinderella | Underdog sports team |
One and done | Single elimination tournament |
RPI | Ratings Percentage Index |
WS | World Series |
SB | Super Bowl |
Wowzers | Wow |
In sports, a bracket is a diagram of game matchups in a tournament. For example, a bracket outlines the first round of matchups between competitors (people or teams), then shows who the winner of each matchup plays in the next round, and so on, until the championship match.
Many sports use brackets to display who faces who in a tournament (or playoffs), including basketball, football, hockey, baseball, soccer, and esports competitions. While brackets are typically used to organize and visualize matchups, sports fans often engage in contests where they fill out brackets based on their predictions of who they think will win.
March Madness brackets
The most famous example of a bracket is the March Madness 64-team bracket. Since the tournament is so unpredictable (bracket busters), it poses a considerable challenge for fans and non-fans of college basketball to predict winners. As a result, many organizations, workplaces, and friend groups hold contests to see who can most accurately fill out a bracket.