march madness

March Madness is a popular colloquial term for the annual NCAA basketball tournament in the United States. The tournament takes place during March and April, and the term refers to the frenzy it ignites among the sports fans and gamblers. The term is now used in reference to both the men's and women's tournaments. H.V. Porter, an official with the Illinois High School Association, coined the term in 1939 when writing about his state's high school basketball championships. In the 1980s the NCAA began to use the term to describe its championship tournament. Courts later decided that "March Madness" could not be exclusively protected by either organization as it had entered into "dual-use" to describe both championship events. Today, both the IHSA and NCAA license the term for their respective tournament.

Brackets and Picks

During March Madness, many people enjoy predicting the outcome of the tournament. The 65 (including the 2 teams who compete in the play-in game) participating teams are announced by the selection committee on Selection Sunday, brackets. The teams are seeded from 1 to 16 in 4 regional groupings around the country. The eventual winners of the four regions then meet at the Final Four in a predetermined location. The four seeds play out the tournament through single eliminaton until a National Champion is crowned. As a tournament ritual, the winning team cuts down the net at the end of the game. Each player cuts a single strand off of the net for themselves, commemorating their victory. Many people fill out tournament brackets in office pools. Entrance fees vary. Whoever accumulates the most points by accurately predicting the outcomes of the games wins the grand prize, most often pooled from the entrance fees. Points are assessed in different ways, and one example is give below:

First round- 1 point per winning team.
Second round- 3 points per winning team.
Third round- 5 points per winning team.
Fourth round- 7 points per winning team.
Fifth round- 9 points per winning team.
Sixth round- 11 points for predicting National Champion.

The point total steadily increases by round in order to reward those players who correctly picked teams that would go further in the tournament. If at the end of the tournament two players have the same point total, a tie is often broken by the total number of total points scored in the Championship Game.

National Invitation Tournament (NIT)

If a team fails to qualify for the NCAA tournament, they sometimes participate in the National Invitation Tournament. It is a common misconception that the NIT is a "loser's tournement" related to the NCAA tournament; the NIT tournament is in fact independent and predates the formation of the NCAA tournament.

March Madness

Brackets and Picks

National Invitation Tournament (NIT)

See also