winner's, winners, winners' bracket

Which one is it?
Thanks in advance.

 

But as someone earlier said, it's not "men basketball." Therefore, we use possessive to maintain consistency.

 

I daresay lots of papers would hyphenate boys' basketball, bucky.

 

Hyphenate? Boys-basketball?

 

Did I say that? I meant apostrosize. Geez. It's gonna be a long day.

 

Gotcha. I thought maybe I was the one who'd lost my mind.

I like "apostrosize," though.

 

Yes, buck. They DO "own" the bracket. It is the bracket of the winners. Possessive.

Winners' bracket.

 

You could just use championship bracket and elimination bracket and not have to deal with anyone owning anything.

 

You can't call it the "losers bracket" or the poor kids will get their feelings hurt. They work just as hard as the winners, you know.

 

Works in amateur wrestling; not so much in stick-and-ball format, where a team can lose its opening game, play its way back through the losers/elimination/bottom half of the bracket, eventually defeat an undefeated team twice and win the tournament. In wrestling, the best a loser can hope for is usually fifth place.

 

Yeah, except for, you know, on those scoring plays. And how dare you put it down that my son gave up the winning play! He was supposed to be standing around!

 

Buck is right. Here is the entry of the stylebook that should explain it:

DESCRIPTIVE PHRASES: Do not add an apostrophe to a word ending in s when it is used primarily in a descriptive sense: citizens band radio, a Cincinnati Reds infielder, a teachers college, a Teamsters request, a writers guide.

An ’s is required, however, when a term involves a plural word that does not end in s: a children’s hospital, a people’s republic, the Young Men’s Christian Association.