2020 March Madness Brackets Won't Be Revealed After NCAA Cancels Tournaments

Fans and analysts won't have the chance to see the hypothetical fields for this year's NCAA basketball tournaments. 

Dan Gavitt, NCAA men's basketball vice president, confirmed the news in a statement Sunday (h/t Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde): "There will be no bracket release."

CBS Sports' Matt Norlander relayed Gavitt's full statement, which concluded with, "There is not an authentic way to produce tournament fields and brackets at this point and that isn't fair to the teams that would be positively and negatively impacted by manufacturing March Madness."

The men's and women's tournaments were canceled when the NCAA announced all remaining winter and sports championships wouldn't be played due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Gavitt left open the possibility the NCAA would release a version of the men's tournament bracket when speaking to Norlander on Friday:

"We're hearing today there's interest from coaches and athletic directors from that. I wouldn't say we've shut down the idea completely, but there is, practically speaking, it's a bit challenging at this moment. ... There's pluses and minuses to any decision. If you put the field together, you could have teams, depending on that conference's policy, would not be the most obvious choice as the [automatic qualifier]. It's something we're going to continue to look at. This has been so fast, so emotional, we'll continue to think on it a little bit."

David Worlock, NCAA tournament media coordinator, shot down the idea later on Friday by telling ESPN the process of building the field was "hardly started" and the "priority for committee members then was to return home to tend to affairs on campus or conference offices."

The NCAA men's tournament field is comprised of 32 automatic bids from conference tournament champions and 36 at-large bids. Less than half of the conference tournaments had been played in full before the cancellations began. 

Sunday would have been the official release day for this year's men's tournament. This will be the first year without a men's tournament since the NCAA adopted the format before the 1938-39 season.