March Madness is the annual NCAA college basketball tournament, generally held throughout the month of March. The next March Madness will kick off with Selection Sunday on March 16, 2025.
March Madness is one of the most anticipated and watched events in all of sports. Here’s everything you need to know about the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, which has been played since 1939. The NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament is a single-elimination tournament of 68 teams that compete in seven rounds for the national championship. The penultimate round is known as the Final Four, when (you guessed it) only four teams are left.
Selection Sunday is the day when the Selection Committee reveals the full NCAA tournament bracket, including all teams and all seeds. We update this article every year with information on when Selection Sunday is and how to watch the bracket reveal.
The term "March Madness" was first used to refer to basketball by an Illinois high school official, Henry V. Porter, in 1939, but the term didn’t find its way to the NCAA tournament until CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger (who used to be a sportswriter in Chicago) used it during coverage of the 1982 tournament. The term has been synonymous with the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament ever since.
There are two ways that a team can earn a bid to the NCAA tournament. The 32 Division I conferences all receive an automatic bid, which they each award to the team that wins the postseason conference tournament. Regardless of how a team performed during the regular season, if they are eligible for postseason play and win their conference tournament, they receive a bid to the NCAA tournament. These teams are known as automatic qualifiers.
The second avenue for an invitation is an at-large bid. The selection committee (more on them in a second) convenes on Selection Sunday, after all regular season and conference tournament games are played, and decides which 36 teams that are not automatic qualifiers have the pedigree to earn an invitation to the tournament.
The NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Committee is responsible for selecting, seeding and bracketing the field for the NCAA tournament. School and conference administrators are nominated by their conference, serve five-year terms and represent a cross-section of the Division I membership.
There are a multitude of stats and rankings that the Selection Committee takes into account, but there is no set formula that determines whether a team receives an at-large bid or not. Once the field of 68 is finalized, each team is assigned a seed and placed in one of four regions, which determines their first round matchups and their path to the championship.
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is made up of 68 teams. On Selection Sunday, before any tournament game is played, those teams are ranked 1 through 68 by the Selection Committee, with the best team in college basketball — based on regular season and conference tournament performance — sitting at No. 1. Continue reading from NCAA
