Tourney Format History

From 1985 to 2000, college hoops fans enjoyed the madness of March watching 64 teams battle their way through a 6 round bracket tournament to determine the best team in college basketball and crowning the national champion.  After 15 years of perfection, the 65 team format was adopted in 2001 to accommodate an extra automatic bid for the newly formed Mountain West Conference.  The extra team meant that the 64th and 65th seeded teams as determined by the NCAA Selection Committee would play a single early game, called the "Play-In Game", played between Selection Sunday and tipoff of the first game of the bracket of 64 on Thursday in order to determine the last spot in the tourney, last spot being the #16 seed playing in the region against the overall #1 seed.

How We Handled 65 Teams

The 65 team format put a minor kink in everyone's friendly office pool bracket.  At PoolHost.com, we've always excluded the play-in game from our system, leaving the 64 team bracket untouched.  The undetermined #16 seed spot would be left as TBD until it was decided and users could still pick that spot if they felt that either play-in team would beat the #1 seed (some people feel lucky!).  Once the play-in winner was determined our system automatically updated that slot on each person's bracket to the team's name.

Expansion To 68 Teams

In an effort to dodge some of the controversy in years past over the fate of the so-called "bubble" teams that didn't make the Big Dance, the NCAA this year has expanded its format to include 3 additional teams making for a total of 68 teams getting invitations to the tourney.  There will now be 8 teams competing for the final four spots in the tourney with the final 4 automatic qualifiers playing for two #16 seed spots and the final four at-large bids playing for two at-large positions that will be either #11 or #12 seeds in their regions.

How We'll Handle The New Format

The "First Four" games (as they'll be called this year) that determine the last four spaces in the bracket of 64 will be played on Tuesday, March 15th and Wednesday, March 16th before the traditional first tip on Thursday, March 17th.  Because of the small window of time between Selection Sunday, March 13th and these First Four games, there is no way we could expect our users to get their full brackets completed in such a short amount of time.  Instead, we'll only be scoring the traditional bracket as we always have.  The last four spaces on the bracket will be marked as TBD and will still be pickable, just like the single play-in spot in years past.  As the First Four games are played, the bracket and user picks will update automatically to reflect the team names for these undetermined spots.  Users will continue to be able to make or change picks up until the tip-off of the first game of the full bracket on Thursday, March 17th.

We're looking forward to getting feedback on the new format and how our system handles it.  As always, all user input is appreciated!

PoolHost.com Team