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March Madness

National Invitation Tournament (NIT)

The post-season tournament pre-dates the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship tournament by one year; in the tournaments' early years there was often some contention as to which champion was in fact the nation's best collegiate basketball team. Since the rise to prominence of the NCAA tournament, the post-season NIT has generally consisted of teams who failed to qualify for the NCAA event. As such, it has been nicknamed by some as the "Not Invited Tournament," indicating its lower status.

Originated by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association in 1938, responsibility for administering the NIT was transferred two years later to local colleges, first known as the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Committee and in 1948, as the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA), which was comprised of representatives from the five New York City schools, Fordham University, Manhattan College, New York University, St. John's University and Wagner College.

Originally all of the men's teams qualifying for the tournament were invited to New York City and all games were played at Madison Square Garden. In recent years, as interest in collegiate sports in general has declined in the Metropolitan New York area as interest in professional sports has increased, and interest in the NIT has declined as it has been dismissed as "playing for 66th place", earlier rounds are now played on campus sites and only the semi-final and final rounds are held at the Garden.

Operated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The association plays two tournaments each year: one played each spring, with its final rounds in New York City at Madison Square Garden and one each November (the preseason NIT, founded in 1985). The tournament was operated by the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA) up until 2005. In 2005, the NCAA purchased the NIT tournament to settle anti-trust concerns brought by the MIBA. As part of the purchase of the NIT by the NCAA, the MIBA disbanded.

NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship

The first national championship tournament, in 1939, was conducted by the National Association of Basketball Coaches and sanctioned by the NCAA, which took over the tournament in 1940. From 1939 through 1950, one team was chosen from each of the NCAA's eight districts. Four of them competed in a western tournament and four in an eastern tournament, with the two champions then playing for the national title.

The tournament expanded to 16 teams in 1951, with 10 conference champions automatically qualifying and 6 at-large teams chosen by a committee. The move to the "Final Four" came the following year, when the number of regional tournaments was increased from two to four.

In 1954, the number of teams grew to 24, with 15 conference champions and 9 at-large teams. The number varied somewhat until 1975, when a 32-team bracket was adopted and the selection committee was allowed to choose a second team from a conference as an at-large entry.

The field has grown twice since then, to 48 in 1980 and to 64 in 1988. The number of conference champions automatically qualifying is subject to change from year to year, but under NCAA rules they can make up no more than half the teams in the tournament. The others are chosen by a committee, with the help of a computer ranking system. The two lowest-seeded teams (usually teams below .500 who win their conference tournaments to gain their automatic bid) play a pre-tournament game to determine which will advance into the first round of the tournament, with the winner advancing to play the best team overall. This play-in game was added in 2001 and has been played in Dayton, Ohio each subsequent year.

The NCAA championship game was first televised in 1954, but television didn't have a major impact on the tournament until 1969, when NBC's national telecast drew a large audience, mainly because UCLA was going after an unprecedented third straight championship.

UCLA's remarkable record--five more titles in the first six years of the 1970s, including four more in a row--helped build even larger audiences of viewers who wamted either to see history in the making or to see the streak end. In 1973, NBC's first prime-time broadcast of the championship game, UCLA's victory over Memphis State, drew a 20.5 share, a record at the time for any basketball game, college or professional.

NBC expanded its coverage in 1978 to include the four regional championship games leading up to the Final Four. Other early-round games were carried on the TVS network and by NCAA Productions. "March Madness," as the tournament is now known, became a reality when CBS agreed to pay $18 million a year for television rights from 1982 through 1984 and ESPN began to televise all of the games that CBS didn't cover.

The NCAA tournament is now one of the major sports events on TV. Shortly after losing its share of the NFL television package in 1994, CBS agreed to pay $1.725 billion for rights to the tournament through 2002. Although no single game draws an audience comparable to that for the Super Bowl, the total package of games, with its built-in regional favorites, rivals the NFL's playoff series, the NBA playoffs, and the World Series in fan interest and television appeal. The television money has made the tournament the NCAA's largest single source of revenue by far, especially since the association has lost rights to most major college football games.

Selection Sunday is the day when the NCAA College basketball tournament participants are announced, placed and seeded accordingly. Both CBS and ESPN cover the selections for the men's tournament live. CBS has the official rights to cover the selection of the men's tournament field as the TV network which covers the vast majority of the tournament (everything except ESPN's coverage of the play-in game). For this reason, CBS announces each bracket first, followed seconds later by ESPN. Both networks send camera crews to schools around the nation to capture their reactions when they find out what seed they received or if they even made the tournament at all. Once the teams are announced, millions of fans start to fill in their brackets. The day is always filled with much speculation and information on the bubble teams that may or may not make it.

It is known as the selection process. The NCAA committee gathers to select and place 65 men's teams that they deem worthy of an invitation to the NCAA Men's basketball tournament. The ten-member selection committee is made up of athletic directors and conference commissioners throughout Division I men's basketball. The committee is chosen to ensure that conferences from around the country, both major and so-called "mid-major" conferences are represented; in recent years, the NCAA has also ensured that at least one woman sits on the selection committee. Committee members must leave the room when their own school (or schools, in the case of the conference commissioners) is being discussed, although they may answer factual questions (about injuries, etc.) if asked. An athletic director may be present when other schools from his conference are discussed, but he may only speak if asked.

The tournament, conducted over three weekends, two of them long weekends, whose field includes regional conference champions and other top teams, is staged in a single elimination format. Since its 1939 inception, it has built a legacy that includes dynasty teams and dramatic underdog stories. In recent years, friendly wagering on the event has become something of a national pastime, spawning countless "office pools" that attract expert fans and novices alike.

In the men's tournament, all sites are nominally neutral: teams are prohibited from playing tournament games on their home courts (though in some cases, a team may be fortunate enough to play in or near its home state). Regional games are played on the first Thursday and Friday. The quarter-finals on Saturday and Sunday reduce the field to the "Sweet Sixteen."

The playoff term Elite Eight has been popularized to refer to the final eight teams in the NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament, who play in the final game of each of the tournament's four regional brackets. The winners advance to the Final Four. The NCAA has also trademarked Elite Eight as a reference to the final rounds of the men's NCAA Division II Basketball Tournaments. Unlike Division I, the finals of Division II tournaments consist of eight teams, meeting at a predetermined site.

Regional semi-finals are played on the second Thursday and Friday, with regional championship games on Saturday and Sunday producing the "Final Four". Two games on the third Saturday of the tournament determine the finalists, for several years, the teams eliminated in the semifinals met in a consolation game prior to the championship; this was discontinued in 1981. The finalists meet in the championship game on Monday night.

NCAA Final Four: The Official 2005 Final Four Records Book Researched and complied by the NCAA, this is the one-and only official reference on the Final Four used by sports media nationwide.

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