Every year, millions of sports fans eagerly fill out their March Madness brackets, predicting which teams will advance in the NCAA tournament. While many rely on printed sheets or specialized apps, a growing number of fans use spreadsheets like Excel and Google Sheets to manage their March Madness brackets.
Here’s what to know about the March Madness spreadsheet bracket trend.
Spreadsheets Make Weekly Updates Easier Than Paper Brackets
Spreadsheet brackets are trending this year because they’re easy to update and share. A quick color change takes practically no time, and a formula can help individual brackets update from a master template.
Plus you can highlight winning teams in one color and losing teams in another, making it easy to see the progression of the tournament at a glance.
More advanced users even incorporate Google Sheets web scraping formulas that pull live data from the web, ensuring that their bracket is always up to date without manual entry.
Compared to a paper bracket, which requires constant reworking, a spreadsheet is a faster, cleaner, and more efficient solution for tracking tournament results.
Easier to Share Than a Whiteboard
Many offices, friend groups, and fantasy leagues like to keep a tournament bracket on a whiteboard so everyone can see it. While this is fun in person, it comes with several drawbacks.
Only one person can update the board at a time, and if someone erases or changes something incorrectly, there’s no way to recover past versions. Plus, if you’re working remotely or not in the same location, you have no way to participate in real time.
A spreadsheet gets shared instantly via Google Sheets, Excel Online, or other cloud-based platforms. Instead of being tied to a physical location, everyone in the group can view and update the bracket from anywhere—at home, in the office, or anywhere else.
With permission settings, the bracket organizer can decide who can edit and who can only view, reducing the risk of accidental changes. Plus, version history lets you track past updates and restore previous versions if needed.
Using a Spreadsheet to Track Game Data
Spreadsheets aren’t usually used for brackets, they’re usually used for data. And that’s where they shine during the tournament.
Instead of relying solely on wins and losses, some sports fans create a detailed stats sheet to monitor team performance, player stats, and historical trends. By inputting data such as points scored, shooting percentages, rebounds, turnovers, and defensive efficiency, you can analyze patterns and make more informed predictions for future rounds.
For those in fantasy leagues or betting pools, tracking stats in a spreadsheet allows for real-time ranking and scoring. Users just set up formulas to automatically calculate point totals based on performance metrics, giving you deeper insight into how teams are progressing.
Those with more advanced abilities can pull live stats from the web. A Python course will give you the basics on this, but essentially you’re using APIs or web-scraping tools to import data into your sheet.
Here’s how to connect Python and Google Sheets.
You can also use Google Sheets’ IMPORTHTML or IMPORTDATA functions to keep tabs on every game without constantly refreshing sports websites. And those with tons of data have even more tools to help them predict results before filling out their bracket at all.
Using Python for sports data is incredibly powerful. With the Pandas drop column method for data cleaning, it isn’t difficult to refine your data set into something useful.
The Future of Bracket Management
As spreadsheets become more powerful and user-friendly, their role in sports and gaming tournaments will continue to grow. Whether you’re a casual fan or a dedicated analyst, Excel and Google Sheets provide an efficient, customizable, and collaborative way to manage your March Madness picks.
For those looking to build their own bracket, SpreadsheetPoint.com offers free, pre-made templates to get started quickly.
Do you plan to use a spreadsheet for your March Madness bracket this year?
