Skip to content

Ad Disclosure

NCAA decides against bracket announcement for canceled tournament

Paul Harvey

By Paul Harvey

Published:

Fans have known for a few days that there would be no March Madness this year. However, some fans still held out hope that there would be a bracket release ranking the top 68 teams in the country for the year.

Well, on Sunday the announcement came down that the NCAA has decided against revealing a bracket. That is not too surprising considering the tournament would not be played anyways, but NCAA SVP of Basketball Dan Gavitt released a statement Sunday afternoon explaining the decision.

According to Gavitt’s statement, he cited “incomplete seasons” for tournaments that would not be played as part of the reasoning for not doing a bracket release. Here is part of that statement:

“The important work of the basketball committees is to set up competitively-balanced brackets to determine national champions. I don’t believe it’s responsible or fair to do that with incomplete seasons — especially for tournaments that unfortunately won’t be played. Therefore there will not be any NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball championship selection shows or tournament brackets released this year.”

…

“However, anything less than a credible process is inconsistent with the tradition of the NCAA basketball championships. Brackets based on hypotheticals can’t substitute for a complete selection, seeding and bracketing process. There will always be an asterisk next to the 2020 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball championships regardless if brackets are released. There is not an authentic way to produce tournament fields and brackets at this point without speculating and that isn’t fair to the teams that would be positively or negatively impacted by manufacturing March Madness.”

So not only will fans be without a tournament this season, but there will also not be any sort of bracket. It will now be interesting to see if any team claims the 2020 National Championship without a final bracket for the season.

Paul Harvey

Paul is a lifelong fan and student of all things college football. He has been covering college football since 2017 and the B1G since 2018.