What is March Madness? The popular US basketball tournament explained

A March Insanity 2023 sport between the Charleston Cougars and the San Diego State Aztecs in Orlando, Florida. Getty / AFP

Throughout the US each March, the flowers bloom, the timber develop new leaves — and everyone seems to be glued to their TV screens for March Insanity, the annual faculty basketball event.

The event is run by the Nationwide Collegiate Athletic Affiliation (NCAA) and pits the nation's high college basketball groups in opposition to one another in a fierce competitors that has taken place nearly yearly since 1939.

The competitors was cancelled in 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the one time in historical past it was not held.

The one-elimination event entails 68 groups that compete in seven rounds for the nationwide championship, with the second-to-last spherical often known as the Ultimate 4, when solely 4 groups are left.

How are the groups chosen?

There are two ways in which a staff can earn a bid for the event, in keeping with the NCAA. The 32 Division I conferences all obtain an automated bid, which they every award to the staff that wins the postseason convention event.

The second means is receiving an at-large bid, which works to the highest-scoring eligible groups throughout totally different ranges, that means even faculties with out huge, costly athletic departments have an opportunity to play.

As soon as the sphere of 68 groups is finalised, they're assigned a seed and sorted into 4 areas, which determines their first-round matchups and their path to the championship, in keeping with the NCAA.

UCLA's Abramo Canka shoots a layup below North Carolina-Asheville's Drew Pember in the course of the second half within the first spherical of the NCAA males's basketball event on March 16, 2023, in Sacramento, California. Getty / AFP

The event is wildly standard and even these not usually occupied with faculty sports activities take part.

The massive draw for followers is not essentially free-throw methods or hook photographs, nonetheless — it is the brackets.

In the beginning of each event, followers fill out a bracket, choosing the groups they assume will win in every sport in addition to which staff would be the final champion.

The craze attracts tens of thousands and thousands of People yearly and main sport channels resembling ESPN and Fox Sports activities host on-line bracket tournaments wherein winners can win a whole lot of 1000's of dollars.

Why do they name it March Insanity?

The obvious reply is as a result of it largely takes place in March. This 12 months's event kicked off on Tuesday with the First 4 - 4 video games between lower-ranking groups to find out the final 4 in - and can proceed to the NCAA championship sport April 3.

The time period was coined in the course of the first 12 months of the event in 1939, when Illinois highschool official Henry V Porter wrote in a bit for an area journal that “a little bit March insanity could complement and contribute to sanity and assist hold society on an excellent keel".

The following sanity, nonetheless, might need quite a bit to do with whether or not your groups do in addition to you hope they may.

Brackets for the NCAA event, which options 68 faculty basketball groups. AP