About NCAA Playoffs

The National Collegiate Athletic Association, otherwise known as the NCAA, has a playoff type format for the 4 major sports that its colleges and universities engage in with the exception of football. Basketball has the hugely successful NCAA Tournament that starts in March, while hockey has a playoff that results in a "Frozen Four" semifinal each year in the early spring. Baseball has the College World Series played in Nebraska in June but football, despite public outcry, uses what is called the Bowl Championship Series system to determine the national champion, without a playoff per say.

  1. Hockey

    • In men's Division I NCAA ice hockey, the playoffs include the top 16 teams in the nation divided up into 4 brackets of 4 teams each. These regional brackets are the East, Northeast, Midwest, and West with the playoffs being a single-elimination format, meaning that the winner of each regional advances and the loser does not. The term Frozen Four was used first in 1999 as a take-off on basketball's "Final Four." The site of the Frozen Four changes each year. Division III schools have a similar type of tournament playoff format to determine a champion. The women also have their own Division I Frozen Four to crown a winner.

    Baseball

    • The College World Series was first played in 1947 and has been held in Omaha, Nebraska since 1950. It is the baseball playoff for men's Division I baseball, with the other divisions also holding playoffs of a similar nature. In Division I, 64 teams begin regional play to be one of 8 that advance to the World Series. Once there, the tournament is a double-elimination format that culminates with a best of 3 series between the two bracket winners. Women play their World Series of softball under the same type of circumstances with their series being played in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for Division I.

    Basketball

    • Both men and women basketball teams in all NCAA divisions have a single elimination tournament to determine who the top team is. In Division I, the men's tournament, is wildly popular. It involves a total of 64 teams, with a committee selecting the participants based on a number of factors such as won-loss records and schedule strengths. The teams are divided up into groups of 16 and then seeded 1 through 16 with the number 1 seed playing the 16th seed, number 2 competing against number 15 and so forth. The games are played at a number of venues around the country and the winners of each bracket meet in the Final Four at a designated site which changes each year much like it does in hockey.

    Football

    • While Division II and III have a playoff system in place to allow teams to decide the championship on the field, Division I does not. The football crown in Division I is determined by the Bowl Championship Series, or BCS, which is a complicated system that uses computers and polls to match the top two teams in the country against each other. The title game is played at a predetermined stadium and is held following the bowl games in early January. Whereas the national title used to be voted upon by such entities as the Associated Press in the past, with teams records taken into account, the BCS attempts to be more objective about who meets in the championship. Attempts to have a football playoff have always met with resistance from colleges, who reap large financial benefits from television contracts through the BCS.

    Types

    • There are other sports at the NCAA level that use playoffs to resolve who the best is. Sports such as lacrosse and field hockey use playoffs as do soccer, water polo, and volleyball. Other sports of an individual nature such as tennis have tournaments for the top players. Activities such as swimming, track and field use season ending meets that offer a chance for teams and individuals to excel after they have gone through regional competition.