Top Sites for Building Brackets Online

By Gilbert Falso :: 5:01 PM

Ah, March. When college basketball fans everywhere turn to one thing – brackets!

One thing that digital and social media have made much easier over the past several years is researching and creating the brackets that go along with this yearly NCAA March Madness disease.

From tracking the teams, to looking up statistics, percentages, and schedules, never before has such information been so easy to get a hold of and use.

Here are a few of our favorite sites for researching and creating those all-important predictions:

ESPN Bracket CentralThis is a good bet if you want to spread the bracket experience to family and friends. Pick your brackets, and create or join groups as you see fit. This year, the sports network is sweetening the pot for the very best bracket pickers – they’ll be entered into a drawing for a gift card from Best Buy worth $10,000.

Yahoo! Fantasy Sports
Like ESPN, the Yahoo! bracket application also allows you to join groups with family and friends, but also includes some pretty slick Facebook integration as well. Not only can you compete with your buddies, but you can also enter a huge open Facebook challenge with other Yahoo! Fantasy Sports users and Facebook users.

NCAA March Madness Application
The “official” app of March Madness, this offering from the NCAA is good for those who want to track and manage their brackets while on the go. The NCAA app is available for download on both iOS and Android platforms. And, like Yahoo!’s offering, the NCAA app also offers Facebook connectivity. If you’re a cable subscriber, you can also use the app to view the games on cable channels for free. If you’re not a cable subscriber, you’ll still be able to watch the games that are carried over the CBS network.