Introduction to How March Madness Works
March Madness is a phenomenon that grips the national sports psyche from the second week of March through the first week of April. March Madness is the moniker that is given to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments. These tournaments determine the national champions of college basketball.
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The NCAA tournaments are an American tradition that sends millions of fans into a synchronized frenzy each year. It's this chaos that gives the tournament its March Madness nickname. March Madness is the concentrated hype of 68 teams vying for college basketball's biggest prize. It's the last-second, buzzer-beating baskets, the euphoria of winning to play another day and the agony of losing and going home.
In this article, we'll break down the brackets of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and look at how teams are selected, how they are seeded and how the champions of college basketball are determined.
College Basketball Basics
A single governing body, known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), is charged with overseeing the almost 1,300 voluntary college and university members that comprise the association. Volunteers from the association's member schools manage the organization and make rules to ensure fairness among all intercollegiate athletics.
Among the nearly 1,300 colleges and universities that make up the NCAA, 1,066 were considered active members in 2013. According to the NCAA:
an active member is a four-year college or university or a two-year, upper-level collegiate institution that has been accredited by the appropriate regional accrediting agency and duly elected to active membership under the provisions of the Association bylaws.
Active members are allowed to compete in tournaments and other championship events.
College Basketball Divisions
These 1,066 schools are divided into three categories and must follow rules specific to their division. Here are some of the factors that the NCAA uses to delineate between the three divisions.
Division I - These schools must sponsor at least seven sports each for men and women, or six for men and eight for women, with two team sports for each gender. Men's and women's basketball teams must play all but two of their games against Division I teams, and men must play a third of their contests in their designated home arena. Schools have a minimum and maximum number of scholarships they can award. Of the three divisions, Division I is the most prominent and receives the most publicity.
Division II - These schools must sponsor at least five sports each for men and women (or four for men and six for women), with at least two team sports for each gender. Men and women's basketball teams must play at least half of their games against Division I or Division II schools. There are no minimum home game requirements for this division.
Division III - These schools must sponsor at least five sports each for men and women, with two team sports for each gender. Unlike Divisions I and II, Division III schools do not offer athletic scholarships.
One of the NCAA's duties is to organize the annual basketball tournament for men's and women's college basketball of each division. Each tournament is based on a single-elimination format.
Since the Division I tournament is the most prominent, and the format for all of the tournaments is the same, the rest of this article focuses on the Division I tournament. In the next section, you will learn more about the tournament format.
Tickets to the Dance
In 2012-13, there were 347 men's teams and 345 women's teams in Division I college basketball, and each one begins every basketball season with one dream -- winning the national championship. But before these teams can win the tourney, they must make the field of teams that are invited to the tournament. Sixty-eight men's teams and 64 women's teams are granted invitations.
A selection committee that comprises different university athletic directors and conference commissioners chooses teams for both the men's and women's tournaments. Each tournament has its own committee. The selection committee meets between the Thursday and Sunday before the date picked for the tournament's first game. Its job is to figure out the teams deserving of an invitation. The decisions are announced on television during Selection Sunday.
Thirty-one teams receive an automatic invite to the tournament, which is their reward for winning their respective conferences. Thirty of these teams win their tournament through conference tournaments. The remaining invites, 37 for men and 33 for women, are left in the hands of the selection committee. Of the teams left in the pool, certain teams are assured a spot in the tournament, others don't make the cut, and then there's a third group, called "bubble" teams, that could go either way.
Decision Criteria
The committee is sequestered in a hotel during the selection process, not unlike a jury for an important court case. Members must weigh the evidence provided to them though certain criteria. During the selection process, each member must submit a list of teams that should, without a doubt, be in the tournament. This list cannot include the school that the member represents. If eight members put a team on their list, that team is put into the field of tournament teams.
Here are some of the criteria the selection committees rely on:
- Rating Percentage Index (RPI) (For more information on RPI, go to CollegeRPI.com.)
- Ranking in national polls
- Conference record
- Road record
- Wins versus ranked opponents
- The way a team finishes the regular season
The selection committee also looks at an adjusted RPI. The adjustments take into account such factors as wins against highly ranked teams. This adjusted RPI isn't made public.
For those teams that aren't invited, there is no appeals process. The committee's decisions are final. The only conciliation for these teams is the possibility of playing in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT), which invites another 32 teams for postseason play.
Now that you've learned how teams are selected, let's go to the next section and look at how teams are seeded by the committee.
Pods and Seeds
Talking about the NCAA basketball tournament can sometimes sound like a conversation about gardening. Like gardens, the tournament includes pods and seeds. Seeds refer to the placement of a team in one of four regions, and pods refer to the method of grouping seeds at particular first-round and second-round sites. The same committee that selects teams for the tournament also decides how teams are seeded and where they play.
As you learned earlier, the field of teams is divided into four geographical regions. Each region has between 16 and 18 teams, which are assigned a seed number of 1 through 18, with the best team in the region awarded the No. 1 seed. In 2012, the format was modified so the four first-round matchups advanced two 16 seeds, a 14 and a 12 into the field of 64.
Traditionally, the highest seeds (Nos. 1 through 8) have enjoyed more success than the lower seeds (Nos. 9 through 16). The lower seeds represent potential "Cinderellas" of the tournament. A Cinderella team is a team that unexpectedly achieves success in the tournament. Traditionally, Cinderella's chariot turns back into a pumpkin before getting to the Final Four. On the other hand, four Cinderellas have made the men's Final Four in recent years: VCU, George Mason, Butler and Wichita State.
Matching Up Seeds
After the committee assigns seeds, it assigns the top four teams in each region to a first/second round site that is most geographically compatible to those teams, regardless of where the team might play in subsequent rounds. For example, a team from an eastern state that is seeded second in the West region might play its first- and second-round games at a site in the eastern part of the country and then play in the West Regional. A Regional is a tournament within a tournament. The champion of each regional comprises the Final Four.
There are eight sites for the first/second rounds. Teams are placed at these sites in groups of four, which comprises a pod, and there are two pods at each site. For each region, there are four pods.
- One pod includes seeds 1, 16, 8, and 9.
- A second pod includes seeds 4, 13, 5, 12.
- The third pod includes seeds 2, 15, 7, 10.
- The fourth pod includes seeds 3, 14, 6, and 11.
Each week, teams play at a different site. The Final Four is played at a new venue each year, but is usually played in a major metropolitan area.
While it sounds complicated, the NCAA tournament is actually pretty simple. The tournament keeps subtracting teams until there is only one. That team is the champion of college basketball.
Tournament Play
The NCAA tournament is played over a period of three weeks, usually beginning on the third Thursday in March. In 2011, after the first round, or the "First Four" that we mentioned earlier, compete for a chance to get a spot in the top 64, the real tournament begins. In the women's tournament, there are no extra teams, so there is no "opening round."
Over the first two full days of the tournament, the field of 64 teams is pared to 32. In the next two days, the field is trimmed to 16 -- the Sweet 16, as it is often called. These final 16 teams take a four-day break before resuming play on the next Thursday. During the second week of the tournament, the field is trimmed from 16 to four. These teams comprise the tournament's Final Four.
In the third and final week of the tournament, the teams that survive the mayhem of March and make it to the Final Four battle it out in April for the crown of college basketball. In the next section, we will take a closer look at this final championship game.
The Final Four
Many sports use a tournament format to decide their champion, including professional sports. The "Final Four" of college basketball refers to the semifinal round of the Division I Men's or Women's Basketball Tournament. In this round, there are four teams left, and two games are played to determine which two teams will head to the finals.
The words "Final Four" belong only to college basketball. In fact, if you watch college basketball you will frequently hear the term, especially from CBS, which uses the phrase "Road to the Final Four" in its coverage.
Making it to the Final Four means that a team won its first four tournament games, and it only has to win two more to be the national champions. A team that reaches this point in the tournament is already envisioning the hanging of a National Championship banner from the rafters of its home arena, which is a common tradition.
As mentioned before, the Final Fours are played in April, but they are still full of the March Madness syndrome. Typically, the men's semifinal games are played on the first Saturday in April, and the women's are played on the first Sunday. The winners of those games move on to face each other in their respective championship games, which are played on the subsequent Monday.
The Kansas Jayhawks celebrate after defeating the Memphis Tigers during the 2008 NCAA Men's National Championship game.
Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images
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