NCAA Basketball Tournament: What You Should Know

If you are new to March Madness and the NCAA Bracket, now is your chance to get in the mix. With a little bit of research and understanding of the system and tradition of college basketball, you can understand why it is so popular with people. This article should help answer a few questions.

Why is it called March Madness? March Madness basically starts with the various Division 1 College basketball tournaments that take place all over the country. Not every conference has a tournament, but enough of the major conferences do. Usually winners of the tournaments earn automatic bids into the much-larger NCAA tournament which comprises of 65 out of 300+ college teams, playing in a single-elimination tournament.

The reason they call it March Madness is because sometimes a team that hasn't performed very well all season can win their conference tournament and earn a bid into the larger tournament (also known as the Big Dance). This appeals to people because most people root for the underdog and like it when a small team gets to have a chance for national recognition.

Why do so many people watch? People often attribute the popularity of March Madness because of the underdog factor and that someone always knows someone in a school involved with the Big Dance. In college football, usually only a handful of teams get national recognition. The overabundance of Bowl games and the seemingly biased Bowl Championship Series really pushes common viewers out of interest. Why watch a tournament when you only get to see the same 4 or 5 teams really have a chance at the championship year after year?