NCAA isn’t too happy about that basketball bracket leak

On Sunday evening, as bracketologists around the country eagerly awaited the annual unveiling of the NCAA men's basketball tournament bracket during a televised special on CBS, the unthinkable happened: someone leaked the bracket. 

Normally, before you can find the fully filled out bracket across any number of sports, news and gambling websites, the exclusive unveiling is made on television (because the NCAA is all about the student athlete and not at all about ad revenue).

But this year, someone circulated a bracket online that turned out to be completely accurate, saving many viewers the need to sit through an interminable television special that dragged out the full bracket unveiling.

Deadspin pointed out the below tweet which was sent out during the CBS unveiling special when only a portion of the bracket had been revealed. (Yahoo Sports reported the original bracket came from another account, the tweet from which has since been deleted.)

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Twitter had plenty of fun with the leak, cracking jokes and taking advantage of the leak to get a leg up on travel plans. 

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The NCAA, however, isn't too pleased. The deal the NCAA has with CBS and Turner networks, worth over $10 billion, for televised rights of the tournament also includes the exclusive selection shows and they go out of their way to make sure this sort of leak doesn't happen. (A similar leak happened in 2010.)

The leak hit Twitter as half of the tournament's 68 teams had been announced and reports say several teams -- including South Carolina, Michigan, Saint Mary's, and Syracuse -- learned their tournament via the leak versus the televised special. 

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The NCAA put out a statement saying they were investigating how their own bracket leaked to the world during the selection show.

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As for CBS, the network has told reporters it has no comment.

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