When are March Madness brackets due for contests and pools in 2024?

If March Madness is a feast, then we've just finished a round of heavy hors d'oeuvres. Championship Week brought fantastic finishes and upsets galore, and a number of bid thieves that reshaped what the NCAA Tournament field ended up looking like.

To continue the metaphor, Selection Sunday is the equivalent of the waiter explaining the menu. For college basketball fans, now it's time to order. The brackets are live, and if you're like me, you'll spend the next few days poring over every matchup, every player, and every minute detail that can help you get an edge.

The odds of picking a perfect NCAA Tournament bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion. That doesn't stop millions of people from keeping the dream alive each year, though. For those who like to make things interesting, there are endless bracket contests and pools to enter, whether you sign up on a major website or keep track of scores manually in your office pool.

When do brackets need to be turned in by?

Since the NCAA Tournament field was expanded to 65 teams in 2001, and then to 68 teams in 2011, there's no longer a perfect number wherein the same number of teams play in each round. This has led to some confusion as to a) what games need to be picked, and b) when do your picks need to be in by?

Any of the so-called "play-in" games do not need to be picked in your bracket. That means the four games played in Dayton on Tuesday and Wednesday are important from a bracket pool perspective only as far as which winners they produce. You don't need to correctly pick Virginia-Colorado St., Boise St.-Colorado, Montana St.-Grambling, or Howard-Wagner, but you do need to pick their next games correctly.

Once the play-in games are done, the field will stand at 64 teams. That's the number we all care about.

Games in the round of 64 begin at 12:15 p.m. ET on Thursday afternoon and that's when you need to get your brackets turned in by. ESPN's Tournament Challenge says that brackets lock when the Mississippi State-Michigan State game begins at 12:15 p.m. ET Thursday, so be sure to click submit before then.

Most office pools function in the same way, with picks needing to be in by noon on Thursday, or even by Wednesday night. Make sure to check with whoever is running your pool ahead of time so that you don't miss out! Maybe this will be the year that the impossible happens and the perfect bracket is picked, but it will only count if it's submitted on time. Good luck!