Happy Spring Break, collegiettes! Whether you’ll be spending the next week on a beach with your friends, relaxing with your family, or binge watching Netflix in the comfort of your own home, it’s time to prepare for the onset of March Madness 2014. While it’s not on a Superbowl level of spectacle, the NCAA Division I Men’s College Basketball Championship has become one of the biggest sports events of the year, so why not join in the Madness? The tournament is made up of its own language of college basketball jargon and can get just plain confusing if you’re not armed with the right knowledge before attempting to fill out a bracket or watch a marathon session of games. Read on for a streamlined Collegiette’s Guide to March Madness with everything you need to know to engage in a little healthy competition and fill out your own bracket this year, or to get viewing-party-ready before the tournament starts in a few days!
So how does March Madness work?
At the end of the regular basketball season, each of the 32 conferences within NCAA Division I has its own tournament to narrow that group of teams down to a single winner. Each of those 32 winners gets an automatic bid to the championship tournament. On what is called “Selection Sunday” (this Sunday, March 16th!), the other teams that will play in the tournament are announced. The overall idea is that the country’s strongest teams start out playing the worst teams and, as competition gets tougher and tougher, the best college basketball programs of the year will rise to the top.
Who plays in the tournament and when does all of this happen?
A special committee combines the 32 conference champs and 36 other teams deemed good enough to make the cut. On Selection Sunday, all 68 teams find out their rankings (called ‘seeds’) in the tournament, which determines who plays who. The teams are divided into four geographic regions of 16 teams each. The First Round involves only eight of the lowest ranked teams who have to compete in an extra ‘play-in game’ before they can advance. The Second & Third Rounds span a whirlwind weekend of non-stop basketball as the field of teams narrows from 64 to 32 to 16. The Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight rounds are the next weekend, which, as the names suggest, are the respective rounds of 16 and 8 remaining teams. The tournament culminates with the Final Four and then the National Championship when the best overall team wins it all and thousands upon thousands of Madness-crazy fans count their winnings (or mourn their losses) from four weeks of college basketball competition.
Who advances to the next round?
The tournament is single elimination, so once a team loses, they’re out! That’s part of what people love most about March Madness: a team can seem super strong in its own conference all season but lose to a little-known school they’ve never played before in the tournament. The “Cinderella Story” phenomenon is huge in college basketball come mid-March. Who doesn’t love to watch a relatively unknown team burst into the national spotlight and unexpectedly knock off a big basketball school like Syracuse, Kansas, or Villanova?! Butler, Virginia Commonwealth University, Lehigh, and Florida Gulf Coast, among others, have all done it in recent years. The Cinderella team effect is real!
How do I make my own bracket?
All you need to do is make a free account online through really any sports site (ESPN, CBS Sports, etc.) and there will be a March Madness section where you can fill in your own predictions after Selection Sunday. Most of these pools are completely free to join online, though there are many people out there who put money (sometimes lots of money) on these games. I grew up in a household where college basketball was basically a religion and I’m still terrified to join a pool with more than a $5 buy-in fee, so this is totally up to you! You’ll see a blank bracket online that narrows from lots of teams on its outer edges to a single winner at the center. Game by game, you click on the team you think will win until you’ve filled in all the blanks. Just print it out or save it and you’re ready to go!
How do I know who to choose in my bracket?
Most websites have little bios of the teams and pop ups that will tell you how likely one team is to win versus the other, so you can check those out if you’re looking for some guidance. In all seriousness, feel free ditch the overwhelming stats and overload of contradictory advice and get creative! I personally know of several people who won their whole bracket competition by picking all of the teams based on names or uniform colors. But really Clemson, orange and purple uniforms? And Purdue, what is a Boilermaker and how is it a mascot?!
If there’s one thing obsessively watching March Madness (and being raised a diehard Duke fan) has taught me, it’s that anything goes once the tournament begins. There are always huge upsets that even the professional sports commentators didn’t see coming, so don’t stress too much when making your picks or just watching a game with your friends. If the guys on Sports Center can be totally thrown off by the results of some of the games, so can we! As sports commentators and dads (and probably no one else, ever) have been known to say of March Madness: “It’s the Big Dance, baby.” You’re officially tournament-ready, collegiettes. Go join the Madness!