WMYL 96.7 Merle Madness College Basketball Bracket Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the WMYL 96.7 Merle Madness bracket and who runs it?

The WMYL 96.7 Merle Madness College Basketball Bracket Contest is a public bracket vote that asks supporters to pick the team they want to advance through a college basketball bracket. WMYL, the radio station that carries the 96.7 Merle brand, is the organizer. The listing is hosted on Second Street, and the state is Tennessee.

The program belongs to the sports side of a station's audience. A reader who arrives from a search for the station name may want to know whether this bracket is the station's only promotion, and this page covers only the bracket, not the station's other promotions. Its title names the college basketball bracket directly, so the listing is a sport vote in the sports vertical rather than a business award. A reader comparing it with other Tennessee ballots should keep that difference in mind when reading the matchup list.

When did the Merle Madness bracket voting run and what is unstated?

The confirmed bracket ran from March 17 to April 7, 2026, and the listing is now closed. The dates run from mid March into early April, so the window covers the bracket as the listing presents it and not a longer run of rounds. Round-by-round dates do not appear in the listing details available here.

This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The listing does not publish a separate timetable for each matchup, so the closed bracket is the only place a reader can see how the matchups finished.

How does a supporter vote in this bracket today?

A supporter opens the Second Street listing, works through the matchups the bracket lists, chooses the team to advance in each one, and submits the picks with the bracket's control. Each pick is a separate vote, and the listing is typed as a voting bracket, so the order of the matchups follows the bracket itself. A supporter should expect the choices to come in sequence rather than as one question with a list of answers.

Vote limits per device are not stated for this bracket, so a supporter who returns to the listing should check it before submitting picks again. The matchups in the closed bracket show how the field finished once the window closed.

How does this bracket differ from other Tennessee sports ballots?

Tennessee has several sports ballots run by newspapers and other outlets. The sibling pages listed below are athlete polls that name individual performers, so they are built around people. This bracket is built around teams and a sequence of matchups.

A reader who wants a closer comparison can read the state basketball award page for a ballot on the same sport, then compare its format with this bracket. The Johnson City athlete ballot names athletes rather than matchups.

How can a supporter encourage picks for a team in this bracket?

Supporters who want to help a favored team in this bracket can share the Second Street link with friends, students and family who follow college basketball. Any outside-help guidance from the organizer is not printed in the listing, so the live bracket page is the safest starting point for a supporter.

Support works best when people already know which matchups the team plays and when the window closes. For general steps on getting more votes online, see how to get more votes online. Teams with a following in the station's market are the natural audience for a bracket like this, but no page can promise that followers will pick a given team. No service can guarantee a result on a public bracket, and the outcome depends on the public picks the listing counts.