The 80th annual edition of the tournament began on March 13, 2018, and concluded with the championship game on April 2, at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.

[1][2] For the first time in tournament history, all four top-seeded teams in a single region (the South) failed to make the Sweet 16.

[7] However, the law was repealed (but with provisos) days before the NCAA met to make decisions on venues in April 2017.

At that time, the NCAA board of governors "reluctantly voted to allow consideration of championship bids in North Carolina by our committees that are presently meeting".

Per the NCAA, "Upsets are defined as when the winner of the game was seeded five or more places lower than the team it defeated."

[20] For the first time, TBS held the rights to the Selection Show, which expanded into a two-hour format, was presented in front of a studio audience, and promoted that the entire field of the tournament would be unveiled within the first ten minutes of the broadcast.

[21] However, this entailed the 68-team field (beginning with automatic qualifiers, followed by at-large teams) being revealed in alphabetical order, and not by bracket matchups (which was done later in the show).