The remaining teams (36 men's, 36 women's) rely on the selection committee to award them an at-large bid in the tournament.
However, recently women have been serving on the men's committee (including Judy Rose, Lynn Hickey, Janet Cone, and current member Bernadette McGlade), and men have been serving on the women's committee (including Richard Ensor and current member Jeff Konya).
[4] For instance, in 2016 Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione, the NCAA selection committee's chair, said that the stark contrast in Syracuse's performance in 2015-2016 with Jim Boeheim present versus absent was considered the same as missing a key player during the slump.
[5] A number of teams are assured an at-large berth no matter their performance in their conference tournament.
Most teams in the Top 25 in the national polls or RPI are essentially guaranteed at-large berths even if they do not win their respective conference tournaments.
Pacific went on to earn the Big West Conference's automatic berth and advanced to the 2nd round of the 2004 tournament.
Since 2015, the NCAA has placed the "First Four Out" from the men's field as the top seeds in the National Invitation Tournament.
[9] During the 2018 offseason, the NCAA announced that the RPI would no longer be used in the selection process for the Division I men's tournament.
Starting with the 2020–21 season, the NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament also began using the NET.
[11] While the selection committee assembles to do the official work, many predictions are made by various people and organizations.
Speculations and buzz can come from anywhere from random college basketball fans to senior bracketologists and experts on the selection process and the seedings, such as ESPN's Joe Lunardi.
Other well-known experts in this field include Ken Pomeroy of kenpom.com, Jerry Palm of CBSSports.com, Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com, and Dean Oliver of ESPN's BPI.
While nothing is set in stone until after all the games are played and the brackets are established, the committee may have a good idea of where a team is and where they could rise or fall to depending on their showing in the later stages of their conference tournament.
The "S-curve" table in the guidelines displays four teams to a row, alternating left-to-right and right-to left.
In 2005 the Austin, Texas men's regional was fed by games in Indianapolis, Indiana; Tucson, Arizona; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Worcester, Massachusetts.
This is due to the "pod" system enacted before the 2002 tournament to minimize travel for as many teams as possible, especially in the early rounds.
In addition, in 2009, Kansas and West Virginia, the two higher seeds, traveled to Minneapolis to play their opponents North Dakota State and Dayton, although Dayton and North Dakota State are geographically closer to Minneapolis than Kansas and West Virginia.
In the women's tournament, this criterion does not apply, and a team that is hosting is automatically assigned its home arena, regardless of seed.
One major controversy during the 2014 that erupted was #1 seed South Carolina being forced to make two cross-country trips for the tournament, with many charging the Gamecocks were punished as a result of a home game ban by being forced to travel to Seattle for the first two rounds in a regional Washington was hosting, and Palo Alto where they were eliminated in the Sweet 16 in the Stanford regional.
[16] The following year, the NCAA allowed South Carolina to host its first two games, determining that since sites for the opening two rounds were (at least theoretically) determined on merit, those games were not covered by the NCAA's ban on holding its own championship events in that state (which has since been lifted after the Confederate battle flag was removed from the state capitol grounds).
However, in the summer of 2005, the NCAA changed its rules to allow intraconference matchups as early as the second round of the tournament, assuming that all measures to keep the teams apart until the regional finals have been exhausted.
The NCAA committee gathers to select and place 68 men's teams and 68 women's teams that secured automatic berths or are deemed worthy of an invitation to the NCAA Division I men's and women's basketball tournaments that take place in March and April.
Both networks' coverage is augmented by discussion of the selections and predictions about how teams will fare once the tournament begins.
Both CBS and ESPN send camera crews to schools around the nation to capture the teams' (and occasionally fans') reactions during the moment when they find out what seed they received or if they made the tournament at all.
Additionally, millions of college basketball fans begin to fill in their brackets, usually as part of March Madness pools conducted through websites, gambling-related contests, or simply through a group of family members, friends, or co-workers.
Turner Sports (through TBS) aired the Selection Show in 2018 in their first year of holding the rights to the Final Four and National Championship.