By Eshan Singh, Co-Copy Editor
Brackets. Upsets. Buzzer beaters. Cinderella runs. The NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, known as March Madness, can be counted on to provide high-quality entertainment and remains the most exciting tournament in sports.
Sixty-eight teams qualify for the tournament, with a play-in round reducing the field to 64. The teams are divided into four regions and seeded from one through 16. A six-round single-elimination bracket with no reseeding narrows down the teams to one national champion, with each team playing one game in a round.
In many other playoff formats, like those used by MLB, the NHL and the NBA, teams play a series to determine which team advances to the next round. This reduces the stakes of games and increases teams’ margin of error, resulting in less exciting matches. In March Madness, single games matter much more to the players and coaches because teams don’t get additional chances to advance after losing a game, forcing them to put in maximum effort and resulting in a more entertaining game. Games with higher stakes make fans more invested in the outcome and give them an improved viewing experience, compared to watching Game 1 of a seven-game series.
This “one-and-done” format makes upsets common, as it’s easier for a weaker team to win a game than a series. According to the NCAA, in the last 39 March Madness tournaments, there were about 8.5 games on average where the winning team was at least five seeds lower than the losing team. Upsets are exciting for fans due to their unexpectedness and fans’ tendency to root for underdogs.
Additionally, the number of games in March Madness gives the tournament quantity to go along with quality. The large number of rounds results in more upsets and exciting finishes and longer Cinderella runs, where a low-seeded team advances far in the tournament. It gives March Madness its most unique advantage over other competitions: fan-made brackets. Filling out a bracket, comparing it with your friends’ and rooting for its accuracy is more fun when there are more matchups and more upsets.
Some may feel that the reduced quality of play compared to professional basketball weakens March Madness, but in actuality it does the opposite. Since fewer points are scored, baskets matter more than in an NBA game, making successful shots more exciting.
College athletes being less experienced and less skilled means that they’re more inconsistent, which makes the national champion very hard to predict — according to March Madness research website BracketResearch.com, 36% of March Madness champions weren’t one-seeds. In contrast, in the 2024 NBA playoffs, the Boston Celtics, the team with the best regular season record, cruised to the championship.
In March, the weather is dreary, but thankfully, fans can stay inside, turn the TV on and enjoy the top-tier entertainment that is March Madness. No other sports tournament can come close.
Eshan Singh can be reached at [email protected].
