Back Campionat de bàsquet de l'NCAA Catalan NCAA Division I Basketball Championship German Campeonato de la División I de Baloncesto Masculino de la NCAA Spanish جام قهرمانی بسکتبال دسته اول مردان ان‌سی‌ای‌ای Persian NCAA-koripallon I-divisioona Finnish Championnat NCAA masculin de basket-ball French טורניר אליפות המכללות בכדורסל HE Turnamen Bola Basket Putra Divisi I NCAA ID Campionato di pallacanestro NCAA Division I Italian NCAA男子バスケットボールトーナメント Japanese

NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament

"NCAA men's basketball tournament" redirects here. For other division tournaments, see NCAA basketball tournament.
"March Madness" redirects here. For other uses, see March Madness (disambiguation).
"NCAA March Madness" redirects here. For its televised coverage, see NCAA March Madness (TV program). For the video game series formerly known as NCAA March Madness, see NCAA Basketball (series).
NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament
Most recent season or competition:
2024 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament
SportCollege basketball
Founded1939 (1939)
First season1939
Organising bodyNCAA
No. of teams68
CountryUnited States
Most recent
champion(s)		UConn Huskies (6th title)
(2024)
Most titlesUCLA (11)
TV partner(s)
Streaming partner(s)Paramount+
Max[1]
Official websitencaa.com/basketball
----
Championships

The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played in the United States to determine the men's college basketball national champion of the Division I level in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Played mostly during March, the tournament consists of 68 teams and was first conducted in 1939. Known for its upsets of favored teams, it has become one of the biggest annual sporting events in the US.

The 68-team format was adopted in 2011; it had remained largely unchanged since 1985 when it expanded to 64 teams. Before then, the tournament sized varied from as little as 8 to as many as 53. The field was restricted to conference champions until at-large bids were extended in 1975 and teams were not fully seeded until 1979. In 2020, the tournament was cancelled for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic; in the subsequent season, the tournament was contested completely in the state of Indiana as a precaution.

Thirty-seven different schools have won the tournament to date. UCLA has the most with 11 championships; their coach John Wooden has the most titles of any coach with 10. The University of Kentucky (UK) has eight championships, the University of Connecticut (UConn) and the University of North Carolina have six championships, Duke University and Indiana University have five championships, the University of Kansas (KU) has four championships, and Villanova University has three championships. Seven programs are tied with two national championships, and 23 teams have won the national championship once.

All tournament games are broadcast by CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV under the program name NCAA March Madness. With a contract through 2032, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery pay $891 million annually for the broadcast rights. The NCAA distributes revenue to participating teams based on how far they advance, which provides significant funding for college athletics. The tournament has become part of American popular culture through bracket contests that award money and other prizes for correctly predicting the outcomes of the most games. In 2023, Sports Illustrated reported that an estimated 60 to 100 million brackets are filled out each year.

  1. ^ "How to Watch March Madness Live". NCAA.com. Retrieved March 25, 2024.

Developed by StudentB