March Madness
March Madness refers to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, held each spring since 1939, featuring sixty-eight college teams competing in a single-elimination format. The term originally coined by Henry V. Porter has evolved into a significant cultural event in American sports, drawing attention from fans nationwide. The tournament determines the national champion through a series of games involving both automatic qualifiers from conference championships and teams selected by a committee based on various performance criteria.
The excitement surrounding March Madness extends beyond the games, as fans engage in bracket predictions, often creating a competitive atmosphere among friends and colleagues. The tournament’s structure includes several rounds, such as the Sweet Sixteen and the Final Four, culminating in a championship game that crowns the national champion. In recent years, the branding has also been extended to the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament, which mirrors the men's structure. Overall, March Madness remains one of the most anticipated events in the sports calendar, showcasing the talent of collegiate athletes and fostering a sense of community among fans.
March Madness
March Madness is a brand name associated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. The March Madness brand is also sometimes used in conjunction with the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament. Played each spring since 1939, the NCAA men’s tournament is a single-elimination competition featuring sixty-eight college basketball teams. The winner of the tournament is crowned national champion. While the term March Madness also dates back to 1939, it did not come to be widely associated with the tournament until the 1980s. The NCAA tournament is one of the biggest annual happenings in American sports, comparable to such events as the World Series and the Super Bowl. More broadly, March Madness is also a cultural phenomenon that generates a wave of excitement across the country and turns the attention of nearly all sports fans to college basketball each spring.
Background
The history of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament is closely tied to the origins of the NCAA itself. Founded in 1906 as a rule-making body for college athletics, the NCAA started conducting national championships for various collegiate sports in the 1920s. As part of this effort, the NCAA introduced a championship tournament for college basketball in 1939. In truth, the new NCAA tournament was actually the second such tournament to be established in as many years. Just a year earlier, a different college basketball championship called the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) was played for the first time. While the NIT was initially considered the premiere college basketball tournament, the NCAA tournament eventually won out, becoming the only tournament through which college basketball’s national champion was determined.
The first NCAA championship game was played on March 27, 1939. The historic contest pitted the Oregon Ducks against the Ohio State Buckeyes. With a 46–33 win over the Buckeyes, the Ducks became the inaugural NCAA national champions. Throughout its first twelve years, only eight teams were invited to participate in the NCAA tournament. The tournament subsequently expanded in the years that followed until a total of sixty-five teams were invited in 2001. There were no further expansions until the tournament field was increased to sixty-eight teams in 2011.
The term March Madness was coined in 1939 by Henry V. Porter. At the time, Porter was an official with the Illinois High School Association (IHSA), a state body responsible for regulating various interscholastic sports at the high school level. He used the phrase in an essay of the same name about the excitement surrounding the annual Illinois high school basketball tournament. March Madness first became associated with the NCAA tournament after CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger referenced it during his coverage of the tournament in 1982. The term was initially trademarked by a production company called Intersport, Inc. The IHSA later purchased the rights to the March Madness name and retained full control over it until a 1996 lawsuit split the rights between the IHSA and the NCAA. Both organizations have held the rights to the brand since then.
Overview
The modern NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament is a sixty-eight-team playoff through which each year’s college basketball national champion is determined. Entry into the tournament is by invitation only, and with well over 300 Division I schools in the mix, only the best teams have a shot at winning an invite. There are two ways that teams can earn an invitation to the tournament. A total of thirty-two teams qualify automatically by winning their respective postseason conference tournaments. The remaining thirty-six teams are chosen by a special selection committee made up of various university athletic directors and conference commissioners. A new committee is formed each year. On the Thursday and Sunday before the tournament is set to begin, the committee members are sequestered in a hotel to make their selections. The decision as to whether or not a team will receive an invitation is based on criteria such as its season record, ranking in national polls, and wins against ranked opponents. Teams that are not invited to the NCAA tournament may go on to play in the NIT, which is now viewed as something of a secondary championship tournament.
Once all sixty-eight teams have been selected, they are divided into four separate geographic divisions and placed into a bracket of sixteen teams. These brackets illustrate the specific path each team must take to reach the national championship game. The brackets are also one of the most important parts of the broader March Madness phenomenon. When the initial bracket is released, college basketball fans across the country do their best to predict how the tournament will unfold. They compete with one another to see whose completed bracket comes closest to reality. Because at least few upsets are common during the tournament, it is almost impossible to accurately fill out a perfect bracket. The odds of doing so are estimated to be 1 in 9.2 quintillion. March Madness brackets are also popular among gamblers, many of whom place wagers on the accuracy of their personal brackets.
Heading into the tournament, teams in each geographical region of the bracket are seeded, or ranked, from 1 to 16. Before the first weekend of the tournament, four games are played to determine the final four teams allowed into the round of sixty-four. The games are played between the four lowest-ranked teams that received an automatic bid and the four lowest-ranked teams to get at at-large invitation.
Once the field of sixty-four is set, games commence on Thursday and Friday with the higher-seeded teams playing lower-seeded teams. For example, a 1 seed faces off against a 16 seed, a 2 seed faces the 15 seed, etc. Lower-seeded teams that make a long run in the tournament are often known as Cinderellas. Many games are played simultaneously. To prevent either team from having an unfair advantage, all tournament games are played at neutral sites. By the last game on Friday night, the field of sixty-four teams is cut in half. Thirty-two teams then square off on Saturday and Sunday, with the surviving sixteen teams advancing.
The size of the field is halved again in each subsequent round. The remaining rounds each have a unique name corresponding to the number of teams still playing. These include the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, and Final Four. At the conclusion of the Final Four, the last two remaining teams go on to play in the national championship game. The winner is ultimately crowned as college basketball’s national champion for the year.
Bibliography
Bonsor, Kevin and Dave Roos. “How March Madness Works.” HowStuffWorks, 2019, entertainment.howstuffworks.com/march-madness.htm. Accessed 21 Aug. 2019.
Greenspan, Jesse. “10 Things You May Not Know About March Madness.” History.com, 5 Mar. 2019, www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-march-madness. Accessed 21 Aug. 2019.
Healey, Carrie. “How March Madness Started: History of the NCAA Basketball Tournament.” AOL, 10 Mar. 2017, www.aol.com/article/news/2017/03/10/how-march-madness-started-history-ncaa-basketball-tournament/21878668/#. Accessed 21 Aug. 2019.
Leins, Casey. “7 Mad Facts About March Madness.” U.S. News and World Report, 17 Mar. 2016, www.usnews.com/news/slideshows/7-mad-facts-about-march-madness?onepage. Accessed 21 Aug. 2019.
“‘March Madness’ Crowns Its First Men’s NCAA Champion.” History.com, 28 July 2019, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/march-madness-is-born. Accessed 21 Aug. 2019.
“March Madness Explained.” ShareAmerica, 25 Mar. 2019, share.america.gov/march-madness-explained-2. Accessed 21 Aug. 2019.
“What Is March Madness?” Wonderopolis, 2019, www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-march-madness. Accessed 21 Aug. 2019.
Wilco, Daniel. “What Is March Madness: The NCAA Tournament Explained.” NCAA, 24 July 2019, www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/bracketiq/2019-05-01/what-march-madness-ncaa-tournament-explained. Accessed 21 Aug. 2019.