This page contains everything you ever wanted to know
about March Madness (except how to win your office pool)
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March Madness is a slang term reverently given to the annual Men's and Women's NCAA College Basketball championship tournaments. The tournaments run simultaneously for three weeks, beginning in the middle of the month of March and running through the first weekend in April.
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You DO NOT have to be a college basketball expert, a sports junkie or a master prognosticator to participate in and have incredible amounts of fun with the contests celebrating this event. Every year, millions of people from casual observers to hard-core college hoops fans look forward to "filling out their brackets" and following along as their teams win or lose throughout the Men's and Women's tournaments.
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Each NCAA Tournament (one for the men, one for the women) consists of a winner-take-all, single elimination bracket featuring the 64 best men's and women's college basketball teams (respectively) from across the country.
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For each tournament, the 64 teams are divided into 4 mini-tournaments, or regions, of 16 teams each. All 16 teams in a region are then seeded, 1-16, depending on how well they performed during the regular college basketball season.
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A team that is a "Number 1 seed" for a particular region is considered to be one of the elite teams in the nation. A team seeded 16th is supposedly among the very weakest of the participants. Remember: The lower the number, the higher the seed.
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In the first round of the tourney, the best teams in each region are matched up against the worst teams according to the aforementioned seeding. The #1 seeded team (the alleged "best" team in the region) plays the #16 seeded team (the alleged "worst" team in the region.) The #2 seeded team plays the #15 seeded team, the #3 plays the #14, #4 plays #13, etc., all the way to the 8th seeded team playing the 9th seeded team. This format is mirrored in all four regions of a tournament Teams that win their first round game advance to the second round. The losers go home.
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The second round features the 32 that won their games in the first round; 8 teams per region.
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By the third round, only 16 teams are left. This is often referred to as the "Sweet Sixteen." Teams that make it this far are among the very best in the nation. At this point, each region has only 4 teams remaining.
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The 4th round is the "Regional Finals." This is so because each region only has 2 surviving teams, one of which will advance to the Final Four from each region. In the past few years, the Regional Finals have come to be known as the "Elite Eight," as there are only 8 teams left in the entire tournament by this time.
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The fifth round, or the "Final Four", is the pinnacle of College Basketball. To much hoopla and fanfare, the four regional winners advance to this round. 4 teams; 2 games; the winners play each other for all the marbles.
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The final game features the last two remaining teams. These two teams are the winners of the two games in the Final Four. The winner of this game is crowned the National Champion.
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The theory is that the higher seeded team (i.e. lower in number) will beat the lower seeded team (i.e. higher in number.) Your job is to forecast each and every game in the tournament, from the first round all the way through the championship game. Sounds easy, right? Not so fast, my friend. (Wait... wrong sport...) Anyway, the thing that makes this event so well liked and anticipated throughout the year is the sheer unpredictability of the outcomes. If you don't follow college basketball very closely, don't let this discourage you! Oftentimes, the so-called "experts" overanalyze the games too much, and they're the ones who wind up tossing their brackets into the garbage after the second round. At the same time, the soccer mom down the hall who didn't watch a single college basketball game all year and only filled out her bracket because her co-workers nagged her incessantly to do so is the one who often winds up winning!
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March Madness will always feature surprises... There's the teams that were supposed to be a "sure thing" that get knocked off by a team from some little tiny school that nobody's ever heard of... The teams that win on last second shots... Teams that overachieve... Teams that underachieve... Teams that make you so mad that you want to tear your bracket into little teeny tiny pieces and throw it out the window... and games that make you so happy that you just have to go to your next-door neighbor and rub it in! It's wacky! It's fun! It's crazy! It's unlike anything in the world! It's, well, MADNESS!
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