Freelance Friday: The Madness has Begun
Close games, upsets, buzzer beaters, and even overtime, it’s safe to say the Madness is here. This time of March is an exciting time for the hardcore college basketball fans but also appeals to the casual watcher tuning in to cheer on the underdogs. With wall to wall games the next few days, I thought it would be fun to look at some fun facts about the NCAA Basketball tournament. Let the Big Dance commence!
The National Invitational Tournament (NIT) was actually founded a year before the NCAA Tournament and remained more popular and prestigious for many years
From 1939-1950 the NCAA Tournament only included 8 teams.
Until 1975, Only 1 team from each conference could be in the NCAA Tournament
Although there are no consolidations games currently in the Tournament a third place game was played from 1946-1981
The tradition of cutting down the nets is credited to North Carolina State basketball coach Everett Case who stood on his players shoulders in 1947 to accomplish the task
Tournament games were first televised in 1969
The current TV contract for the tournament raises $500 million for the NCAA, about 90% of its total revenues
The Division 1 basketball tournament is the only NCAA tournament in which the NCAA does not keep the profits
The 12th seed seems to be the lucky number, out of all of the seeds below 7, the number 12 slot has sent the 2nd most teams to the Sweet 16 (19 teams) and at least one 12 seed has won their first game in 22 of the last 24 years
Since 1984 the average number of upsets based on seeding is 8.1, the highest number of upsets in that time frame was 13 in 2001
2008 is the only year in which all four number 1 seeds made the tournament
UCLA has won the most championships 11 and UCLA coach John Wooden has the most championships as a coach with 10
One final fact, I am notoriously bad at filling out brackets, losing the family bracket every year since we all were involved, including a particularly bad year when I lost to the family dog that my youngest brother had helped fill out her bracket. In other words…don’t be looking for sound advice from me.
Let us know how your brackets are going in the comments below!
