Free Printable College Football Playoff Bracket
The whole twelve-team field on one sheet: seeds 1 to 4 resting through the first round, seeds 5 to 12 paired the way the Playoff pairs them, and every round from the campus games to the National Championship. Type this season’s teams in, or print it empty and fill it in as the games are played.
Build your College Football Playoff bracket
Twelve lines, seeds 1 to 12 in order. The sheet handles the rest: the top four get their byes, the other eight are paired 5 v 12, 6 v 11, 7 v 10 and 8 v 9, and each first-round winner lands in the right quarterfinal.
Round one is filled in from your list. Later rounds always print blank.
12 of 12 · bracket of 16 · all 4 byes drawn in
Paste a list straight from a spreadsheet. One name per line.
Slots on the sheet, not players. Pick the smallest one that holds everybody and the spare lines print empty.
Everything you type stays in your browser and is drawn on your own device. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no watermark on the print or the PNG.
Want the bracket to run itself?
A printed sheet is finished the moment it leaves the printer. Move this draw into the Bracket widget instead and winners advance on their own, visitors vote and predict, and a live leaderboard ranks everyone’s picks. Your players come across, so you carry on where you left off.
Your 12 teams come across in the order you typed them, but the widget builds one plain seeded tree, so the 4 first-round byes and the fixed pairings do not come with it and it opens as a standard single elimination draw. The printed sheet on this page is unaffected.
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Widgets that pair with a tournament
A printed sheet settles the draw. These free CommonNinja widgets keep the tournament alive on your own site once the first results are in.
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Free Printable NFL Playoff Bracket
Print the NFL playoff bracket: 14 teams, both conferences, Wild Card through to the Super Bowl, with the two byes already in place.
Use Tool →Free 16 Team Bracket Maker
Print a 16-team tournament bracket: 4 rounds, 15 matches, first round seeded from your list.
Use Tool →Free Blank Bracket Template
Print an empty tournament bracket with no names at all. 4 to 64 slots, every line left blank to fill in by hand.
Use Tool →How It Works
Three steps, about a minute
1. Type or paste your players
One name per line, or paste a column straight out of a spreadsheet. Switch to a blank sheet if you would rather write them in by hand.
2. Check the draw
Choose whether round one follows your list, a random shuffle, or standard seeding that keeps the strongest apart. Byes are worked out for you.
3. Print it
The sheet is fitted to one A4 page exactly, so it never spills onto a second one. Your print dialog will save it as a PDF if you prefer.
The Format
How the College Football Playoff bracket is built
Twelve teams, five automatic bids and seven at-large places, all of them seeded 1 to 12 by the selection committee’s final rankings. The top four seeds rest while the other eight play, which is why this sheet has sixteen lines and four of them are byes. Eleven games in all.
- First Round4 games, played on campus at the higher seed’s home stadium. 5 v 12, 6 v 11, 7 v 10 and 8 v 9. Seeds 1 to 4 sit it out.
- Quarterfinals4 games at bowl sites. The rested top four come in: 1 against the 8/9 winner, 4 against the 5/12 winner, 2 against the 7/10 winner and 3 against the 6/11 winner.
- Semifinals2 games, again at bowl sites. One half of the draw sends a team, the other half sends the other.
- National Championship1 game at a neutral stadium, a week or so later. Twelve teams, eleven games, one champion.
No Reseeding
Why this sheet is still right in January
Most printed brackets carry a quiet caveat: the real competition rearranges itself and the paper cannot. The NFL, for one, reseeds after its first weekend, so the surviving top seed is given the lowest remaining seed rather than whoever is next on the page.
The College Football Playoff does not do that. The bracket published on selection day is the bracket that gets played, with no reseeding between rounds and no reshuffling to avoid a rematch or to keep two teams from the same conference apart. Whoever wins the 8 v 9 game plays the 1 seed, whatever happens elsewhere.
So a printed CFP sheet is not an approximation. Fill the twelve seeds in once the field is announced and every line on it will be correct through to the title game, which is exactly what you want from something pinned to a wall for six weeks.
Pool Rules
Running a playoff pool off the sheet
A printed bracket is still the easiest way to run a pool, and it needs no app and nobody’s email address. Hand out a copy each, collect them before the first game kicks off, and score them as the rounds go.
Weight the later rounds
A common scheme is 1 point per first-round pick, 2 per quarterfinal, 4 per semifinal and 8 for the champion. Eleven games is a short pool, so front-loaded scoring settles it far too early.
Collect them before the first kickoff
Every entry has to be in before the opening campus game. Print a few spares: somebody always wants to redo theirs once they have seen the seeding.
Ask for a tiebreaker
Have everyone write a guess at the total points in the National Championship game somewhere on the sheet. Closest without going over settles a tie, and with only eleven games ties are common.
Pin the master copy up
Keep one sheet as the official record and fill it in as results come in, so nobody has to take anybody’s word for what happened in a bowl game three weeks ago.
Before Selection Day
Printing it before the field is announced
You do not have to wait for selection day. Leave the lines as "1 seed", "5 seed" and so on, print it, and write the real teams in when the committee publishes the final rankings. The structure never changes from season to season, only the names do.
That also makes it a usable sheet through November. Pencil in who you think the twelve will be, argue about it, and rub it out each time the rankings come out. It is a better conversation than a list, because the sheet shows you immediately who would have to beat whom.
Printing
Getting it onto paper cleanly
The sheet is drawn to landscape and fits on one page. Press Print and choose "Save as PDF" as the destination if you want to send it round rather than print it, or use Download PNG for something to drop into a group chat.
Nothing you type is uploaded. The bracket is drawn on your own device, so your pool stays your own business, and there is no watermark on the print or the image.
Other Sizes
Need a different bracket?
Same sheet, same print settings, a different number of slots.
Free Printable NFL Playoff Bracket
Print the NFL playoff bracket: 14 teams, both conferences, Wild Card through to the Super Bowl, with the two byes already in place.
Free 16 Team Bracket Maker
Print a 16-team tournament bracket: 4 rounds, 15 matches, first round seeded from your list.
Free Blank Bracket Template
Print an empty tournament bracket with no names at all. 4 to 64 slots, every line left blank to fill in by hand.
Or start from the general printable bracket maker, which opens with every size and format available and works out the right one from however many players you paste in.
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