Links to Printable NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Brackets

You need a bracket for the 2009 NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament-a printable bracket. Whether its just something to sketch your brilliant strategy on, or whether you need to provide sheets for an office pool that, you want something clear, simple, and, most of all, free.

No need to waste time comparing the various sites' brackets to see which one is best suited for doodling or which one is overrun with ads. That work has been done for you. Below are links to a variety of printable brackets, along with a brief description of its pros and cons. Take a glance at the review, compare for yourself, and get analyzing-on your own time, of course.

The best sites to find free, printable NCAA tournament brackets, with accompanying links:

ESPN.com

http://sports-ak.espn.go.com/ncb/tournament/bracket
(you must link from the "viewable" page to one of the "printable" pages)

Pros: ESPN boasts a clear, simple, elegant design. There's not much in the way of ads to clutter the page. You can choose a pdf or gif file to print.

Cons: The print is small, but that's par for the course. ESPN needs to get their act together, because the "blank" bracket is still linked from the main page as of the publication of this article.

CBS Sports

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/mayhem/brackets/printable_men

Pros: Boxes instead of lines make it easier to keep team names from running together for players who may get sloppy in their penmanship.

Cons: Having a textured background was a terrible idea, and it makes everything harder to read. For this reason alone, pass on the CBS bracket.

Yahoo! Sports

http://d.yimg.com/j/r/ncaab/tourneybracket

Pros: This is probably the best use of space of all the printable brackets. It is the best balance of simplicity and clarity.

Cons: The seed numbers are needlessly small, if that matters.

Sports Illustrated (CNNSI)

http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/basketball/ncaa/men/2009/ncaa_tourney/brackets/tourney_m_1.pdf

Pros: Bold, clear writing make this one the nearest contender to Yahoo! You won't find one that's easier to read.

Cons: Boldness comes at the price of ink toner. There is also a lot of clutter and ads. You'll have to adjust your printer so as not to waste a whole ink cartridge just to print these out.

Fox Sports

http://msn.foxsports.com/id/3461072_37_122.pdf

Pros: Writing is clear, and ads are minimal.

Cons: The layout is confusing because bracket lines don't connect. Whoever designed this was trying a little too hard to be different.

Maddux Sports

http://www.madduxsports.com/ncaa-tournament-bracket.pdf

Pros: Simple and clear, the Maddux bracket is better than several of the bigger-name sports sites' attempts.

Cons: The lines connect in some places they shouldn't, though that may be picky. The only catch is that if you're passing these around the office, you may want to avoid any bracket, like this one, that has ads for gambling websites on it.