By John Newbold

Three hundred twenty-four schools and more than 4.000 athletes all start a journey. Their goal in starting this journey is to have an opportunity to be a part of the Big Dance. To become one of the 65 teams invited to the men's NCAA basketball tournament in March.

How do the teams get to fulfill their dream of playing in the tournament? That's easy: Just make sure you never lose.

If you do lose, as every Division I team did this year, then a committee determines who should get to play (unless you get an automatic bid) and what seed you are.

Who gets an automatic bid? Every conference has a tournament and the tournament champion gets an automatic bid despite its overall record or who the team played during the year.

Conference tournaments are where all the upsets and mayhem begin. For example, this year in the Big Ten conference tournament the ninth-seeded Iowa Hawkeyes beat the top-seeded Wisconsin Badgers on a last-second shot by senior Luke Recker. Then a day later, in the next game, so Recker hit a game-winning shot at the buzzer to beat his former team, the Indiana Hoosiers. His team rushed the court and acted as if it had already won the championship. Iowa lost the next night to Ohio State in the championship and wasn't invited to the Big Dance.

The NCAA Tournament Committee decides the rest of the teams to go to the tournament based in part on the school's ratings percentage index and strength of schedule. The RPI is determined by three factors. First, it looks at a team's winning percentage and multiplies that by 0.25. Second, it looks at the team's opponents' winning percentage and multiplies it by 0.50. Finally it looks at the team's opponents' opponents' winning percentage and multiplies it by 0.25. The percentage you get after that math is used to rank the teams. The NCAA then makes a secret adjustment to the RPI to seed the 65 teams.

Other factors include non-conference schedule, how a team played the last 10 games of the season, how good a team's conference is, and win-loss record on the road. For example, Brigham Young University won only one road game all season, so you know they didn't get invited. We know, Cougar fans, you beat Stanford. I know you deserved a BCS bowl game, too. Just win next year and stop complaining.

March is by far the craziest time in all of college sports. There is no other time when sports fans are skipping as much work and school just to see the opening-round games of the tournament. People everywhere will be glued to their televisions ready to fill out their brackets and see which Cinderella story will develop for a school. Never are there more betting pools in work places then during the tournament. The tournament gives you a chance to cheer for a "David" in hopes that it will slay a "Goliath." There isn't any other college event that can compare with the intensity of the games that are played during March.

During the entire college basketball season every sports fan is trying to debate with other fans that his or her team is the best and will be playing in March.

Now March is here and the debating is over. It is time for the players to lace it up and be prepared to play Thursday and see if their hopes and dreams come true along this journey.

And at the end to be able to say that they're the National Champions for 2002.

MS
MS

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