March Madness Alert! Win Awesome Prizes in GoCertify's Bracket Challenge

Written by GoCertify Staff Published: 13 March 2015

Use your vast knowledge of NCAA men's college basketball — or just do what most of us do and pick the higher seed to win 8 out of every 10 games — to score some sweet loot.

Until there's a Certified Bracketology Expert (CBE) credential on the market and, really, until it's some sort of IT-focused CBE cert, then we probably have no compelling reason to pester you about filling out a detailed flowchart to predict who will win this year's NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship, more commonly called the NCAA Tournament. (Pro tip: It's going to be Kentucky.)

On the other hand, prizes are cool, competition is life itself, and what else, really, do you have to be excited about in March? (OK, sure, but we mean besides that it's not still February.)

That's why we're announcing the first-ever GoCertify Bracket Challenge. If you love college basketball, or even if you just love being correct and beating your buddies (at anything), then get a piece of the March Madness action today.

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of GoCertify, Certification Magazine, TestOut Corporation and the U.S. Army National Guard, you could win a sweet laptop PC, free training materials form TestOut, a suscription to Certification Magazine, official Army National Guard swag (gym bags, shirts, mini-basketballs) and more.

In addition to that laptop PC, we'll be giving away a Kindle Fire, an all-leather basketball and much more. There are prizes for the Top 10 brackets, as well as the brackets than rank 25th, 50th and 100th. There's even a last-place prize, if you happen to fill out the most disastrous bracket in the challenge. And even if you don't win a prize, you can still get bragging rights by beating your friends.

If you're new to basketball, or even just new to NCAA tournament brackets, don't worry: It's simple. Well, it will be simple: You can't fill out a bracket until after tournament seeding is announced on Sunday. For now, just keep the link handy. After seeding is announced, sign up any time before the first games begin on Tuesday night (remember the play-in games!) and complete your bracket.

Brackets are easy: Look over the shoulder of the old guy in this photo. When you fill in your bracket, you'll see somthing that looks roughly like the illustration on his monitor. You have to pick the winner for 32 different games in the first round, but it gets easier after that. If you don't know which of the two teams is better, give it your best guess. Or just pick the team with the numerically lower seed (1 in a 1 vs. 16 matchup, or 5 in a 5 vs. 12 matchup, and so forth).

Note: You have to pick all the games before the tournament begins, so don't log out until your bracket is complete. Now what are you waiting for?! Save the link, sign up and fill out your bracket on Monday, and then kick back and wait for the prizes — or at least the bragging rights — to roll in. And if you're still not convinced, click this link to hear the original NCAA March Madness theme from CBS Sports on YouTube. If those horns don't get you fired up, then you might not have a soul.