March Madness USA

The tournament is split into four regions and each region has teams seeded 1–16, with the committee making every region as comparable to the others as possible. The best team in each region plays the #16 team, the #2 team plays the #15, and so on. The effect of this seeding structure ensures that the better a team is seeded, the worse-seeded their opponents will be.

Two teams play a play-in game game on the Tuesday preceding the first weekend of the tournament, with the winner of that game advancing to the main draw of the tournament and plays a top seed in one of the regionals. This game has been played at the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio since its inception in 2001. This game originated in 2001 with the addition of the Mountain West Conference (and its automatic bid into the tournament) after the NCAA tournament committee opted to include an additional team and play in game in lieu of taking away one of the 34 “at-large” bids. These two teams share equally in the share of funds as if they had qualified for a first round game, and wins in the opening round game are considered wins in the NCAA tournament. Thus, properly, the tournament has 65 teams, although in practice most brackets only include the 63 teams, with one spot blank (to be filled in after the play-in game). Since no #16 seed has ever beaten a #1 seed in the men’s championship, the result of the opening round game is largely deemed irrelevant for bracket-filling purposes.

Since 2002, the tournament has used the so-called “pod” system, in which the eight first- and second-round sites are distributed around the four regionals. Before the 2002 tournament, all teams playing at a first- or second-round site fed into the same regional tournament. The pod system was designed to limit the early-round travel of as many teams as possible.

Each of the eight first and second round sites is assigned two pods, where each group of four teams play each other. A host site’s pods may be from different regions, and thus the winners of each pod would advance into separate regional tournaments.

The first and second round games are played on the first weekend of the tournament, either on Thursday and Saturday or Friday and Sunday. The teams which are still alive after the first weekend advance to the regional semi-finals (the Sweet Sixteen) and finals (the Elite Eight) played on the second weekend of the tournament (again, the games are split into Thursday/Saturday and Friday/Sunday).

The winners of each region advance to the Final Four, where the national semifinals are played on Saturday and the national championship is played on Monday. Before the 2004 tournament, the pairings for the semifinals were based on an annual rotation. For example, in 2000, the winner of the West Regional played the winner of the Midwest regional, and the South winner played the East winner; in 2001, the West winner played the East winner and the South played the Midwest; in 2002, the West played the South and the East played the Midwest. Since 2004 and in response to complaints that too often the two best teams remaining squared off in a semifinal game and not in the final game (such as when the last two remaining 1 seeds, Kansas and Maryland, played in one semifinal while a 2 seed and a 5 seed played in the other semifinal), the pairings are determined by the ranking of the four top seeds against each other. The four number one seeds are ranked before the tournament begins: in 2006, Duke was the overall #1 seed, followed by Connecticut, Villanova and Memphis. Which regional winner is to face which other regional winner is determined based on this ranking. Had all of the #1 seeds reached the Final Four, Duke (from the South) would have played Memphis (from the West) and Connecticut (from the East) would have played Villanova (from the Midwest). As it happened, none of the #1 seeds made the Final Four in 2006, but the South winner (LSU) still played the West winner (UCLA) in a #2/#4 matchup, while the East (George Mason) played the Midwest (Florida) in a #11/#3 matchup.

The brackets are not reseeded after each round. The tournament is single-elimination and there are no consolation games—although there was a third-place game as late as 1981, and each regional had a third-place game through the 1975 tournament. The single-elimination format produces opportunities for Cinderella teams to advance despite playing much tougher teams. Nonetheless, despite the numerous instances of early-round Tournament upsets, including four instances of a #15 seed defeating a #2 seed, no #1 seed has ever lost in the first round to a #16 seed. The closest calls came in 1989 when Georgetown University defeated Princeton University 50–49 and the University of Oklahoma beat East Tennessee State 72–71, and in 1990 when Michigan State had to go to overtime to beat Murray State.