NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament 2012 Bracket
With the NCAA men's basketball tournament set to begin Thursday, fans will be looking to fill out the perfect bracket. ESPN.com

The release of the official NCAA Tournament 2012 bracket is the kickoff to March Madness, and the highlight of this year's Selection Sunday.

Check out the official NCAA Tournament bracket by checking out the below left image, or by downloading a PDF of to it your computer by visiting this link.

The release of the official NCAA Tournament 2012 bracket breaks hearts and makes careers each season, as bubble teams see their seasons extended by at least one more game, or cut short by NCAA basketball's selection committee.

As soon as the official NCAA Tournament 2012 bracket is released, it will be posted in full to this article, so you can begin to make your choices for who will make it to the Final Four in New Orleans, and ultimately win the NCAA Tournament Championship.

Selection Sunday is one of the biggest days for fans as well, as they take out their pens and make decisions about who out of the Field of 68 they think will win which games this year.

Some information has been known about the bracket for a long time: The University of Kentucky will be the No. 1 overall seed. Syracuse, University of North Carolina and Kansas are not far behind.

Those teams have very little to worry about as the official release of the NCAA Tournament 2012 bracket takes place on Selection Sunday.

However, bubble teams are sweating profusely as they await the news of which mid-level teams will go to the Big Dance.

Though on Saturday selection committee chair Jeff Hathaway announced that the committee had already selected the 37 at-large teams in the field, shocking many observers, there is still a lot of tension, as teams on the cusp worry about whether or not they'll be making Cinderella stories of their own, or going home to start a new season of basketball next year.

Players, coaches and fans at the University of Washington are probably trembling about whether or not they will make it to March Madness. So are North Carolina State, Miami, West Virginia, Seton Hall, Northwestern, Texas, Oregon, and many other teams.

This is the stuff that March Madness is made of.