How to Follow the NCAA Playoff Selection Process

The playoff selection process for the NCAA's two most popular sports, men's basketball and football, is relatively complex. Relying on formulas that determine each team's relative strength, the playoff selection process rewards the teams that score the highest in the eyes of the NCAA and its performance formulae.

Instructions

  1. Stay Up to Date on the March Madness Selection Process

    • 1

      Pay attention to the Rating Percentage Index (RPI) releases, which the NCAA makes available starting in February. The top 64 ranked teams in the RPI receive invitations to the March Madness men's basketball playoff tournament.

    • 2

      Watch for the final RPI to be released when the regular NCAA basketball season concludes.

    • 3

      Stay tuned as the top 64 teams are bracketed for the single elimination playoff tournament. The field is divided into four 16-team subfields, which rank the participating teams from one to sixteen. In each subfield, the number 1 seed plays the number 16 seed, number 2 plays number 15, number 3 plays number 14, number 4 plays number 13, number 5 plays number 12, number 6 plays number 11, number 7 plays number 10 and number 8 plays number 9.

    Know Your Bowl Games

    • 4

      Follow the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) selection process to learn which teams will participate in college football's five biggest games: the National Championship Game, the Orange Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl.

    • 5

      Find out which two teams are ranked at the top of the BCS Standings at the end of the regular season. These two will face each other in the National Championship Game.

    • 6

      Check out your ACC, Big Ten, Big East, Big 12 and Pac-10 champions. They each have earned an automatic berth in one of the four other BCS games.

    • 7

      Include the highest-ranked champion(s) from the Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, Western Athletic, Sun Belt or Mountain West conferences if they place in the top 12 of the final BCS Standings. Alternately, one of these conference champions can get the call to a BCS game if they place in the top 16 and have a better record than one of the conference champions that gets an automatic berth.

    • 8

      Notre Dame gets invited to a BCS game if they place in the top eight of the final BCS Standings.

    • 9

      Follow the process by which each BCS qualifying team is matched to a bowl game and an opponent. After a rarely used process to fill out the 10 available slots, if there are any remaining openings, the NCAA requires champions of specific conferences to host specific bowl games. Their opponents are then assigned using a pre-determined formula.

    • 10

      Follow your favorite NCAA sports blog, website or fan site for the announcement of the official BCS schedule.