Okay, so I was messing around with this idea for a tournament bracket, you know, one of those single-elimination deals where you lose, you’re out. I wanted to see how it would look with a whopping 64 teams. Here is how it all went.
First, I grabbed a template online. I didn’t even bother to make something on my own. There are tons of those free printable brackets floating around. I just searched for “64 team bracket single elimination” and boom, plenty of options. I picked one that looked clean, nothing too fancy, just a simple, easy-to-read layout.
Now, this particular template was designed to be printed in landscape mode, so it was wider than it was tall. This meant that all the first-round matchups were lined up on the left and right sides, and the games would progress towards the center. I could see how it might be tough to follow on a small screen, but I figured it’s fine for printing.
Once I had the template, I started filling it out. At first, I was just scribbling in random team names, just to get a feel for how it would look. Let’s be real, I’m not running an actual 64-team tournament here. I’m just a guy who likes to see things organized. After filling in some imaginary team names, I cleared them all out. It was easy enough to do, since most of these templates are editable PDFs, or you can just print them blank in the first place.
Then I thought, what if I wanted to actually use this thing for real? So I opened up a spreadsheet. I like spreadsheets, what can I say? I started listing out 64 teams, you know, just made-up names, whatever popped into my head. Then I assigned each team a seed number, from 1 to 64, with 1 being the best and 64 being the worst. This way, the first round would have the top seeds facing the lowest seeds, which is how most tournaments do it.
- Created a list of 64 team names in a spreadsheet.
- Assigned seed numbers (1-64) to each team.
- Transferred the team names to the bracket template according to their seeding.
After that, I carefully transferred those seeded team names into my bracket template. I made sure to match up the seeds correctly, so the 1 seed was playing the 64 seed, the 2 seed was playing the 63 seed, and so on. It was a bit tedious, but I got it done.
Then, just for fun, I simulated the whole tournament. I’d look at each matchup and decide, based on absolutely nothing, which team would win. I marked the winner and moved them to the next round, round by round, until I had a champion. It was surprisingly satisfying to see it all play out, even if it was all make-believe.
My Realization
Honestly, it’s kinda cool to see how a tournament of this size would unfold. It’s a lot of games, a lot of potential upsets, and a whole lot of bracket-busting fun. If you’re ever bored, give it a try. It’s a fun little exercise, and you might even learn something about tournament structures. Or not. It’s all just for kicks anyway. This is way more fun than I thought it’d be. I ended up spending way too much time on it, but hey, it was a good time.
