NCAA Basketball Tournament Selection Rules

The NCAA men's basketball tournament, also known as March Madness, is one of the most exciting and controversial sporting events of the year. There are specific rules governing the selection of teams for the NCAA tournament field. Sixty-five teams receive a bid, with the 64th and 65th ranked teams playing a play-in game against each other to determine who reaches the main tournament bracket.

  1. Selection Committee

    • The NCAA basketball tournament selection committee consists of 10 Division I conference commissioners or athletic directors. A mix of members from major conferences and mid-major conferences are chosen to ensure that smaller schools are given fair representation. When a committee member's home school is being discussed by the committee, that member must leave the room to prevent any conflict of interest. A committee member may remain in the room when other schools from the same conference are being discussed but may not speak unless requested to by the committee.

    Automatic Bids

    • All of the NCAA's 31 conferences award an automatic tournament bid to their champion. This allows every school in the NCAA to have a chance of qualifying for the tournament, no matter how weak its schedule may be. Every conference except the Ivy League uses a conference tournament to crown its champion. The Ivy League uses the schools' regular season records to determine who gets the automatic bid.

    At-Large Bids

    • The remaining 34 teams are chosen by the selection committee. During the deliberations, the selection committee will consider a team's overall record, difficulty of schedule, strength of conference, record versus ranked opponents, and Ratings Percentage Index (RPI). The RPI is a computerized calculation that takes into account the team's winning percentage, the winning percentage of its opponents, and the winning percentage of the teams played by the opponents.

    Seeding

    • Each of the NCAA basketball tournament's four regions is seeded 1 through 16, with the best team getting the No. 1 seed and supposedly easiest schedule. To determine which teams go in each region, the selection committee will seed every team in the tournament field so they have a list of all 65 teams in order of strength. The four best teams become the No. 1 seeds for each region, the next four are the No. 1 seeds, and so on.

    Bracket

    • The NCAA basketball tournament bracket is divided into four regions: East, South, West and Midwest. The top three teams from each conference must be placed in different regions. If there are more than three teams from a conference, the selection committee will attempt to seed the teams so that they do not play each other before the regional final. Non-basketball issues such as religious restrictions must also be considered by the NCAA selection committee. For example, Brigham Young University does not play games on Sunday due to their Mormon beliefs.