College basketball kept growing and growing through the years. While college football has the bowl season after the regular season, college basketball came up with a tournament all its own.

The NIT and NCAA Tournaments

In 1938, the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association came up with the first college basketball tournament. They called it the National Invitation Tournament. Originally it had six teams, but over time it grew to include 40 teams. The NCAA tournament was created in 1939. It started with eight teams and grew to 65. The NIT and NCAA tourneys of the 1930s really changed the dynamic of college basketball because the tournaments allowed teams from all over the country to face one another and determine the best team in the nation. The NIT and NCAA tournaments were actually viewed as equal events until the late 1970s.

In 1950, the City College of New York won both the NCAA Tournament and the National Invitational Tournament. Doing well in these tournaments helped teams recruit the best players. Some of the schools that do well in the early days of the tournaments are still powerhouses today, including UCLA, North Carolina, Duke, and Indiana. Kansas, whose program was started by Naismith himself, was another early powerhouse; it won its most recent NCAA title in 2008.

Each spring, millions of people enjoy an incredible month of college basketball: the modern NCAA tournament. In the late 1970s, the NCAA tournament established itself as the premier event and the NIT took a back seat. Sixty-five teams, ranked according to their strength, are invited to compete in the NCAA tournament. The top four teams receive a 1 seed, the next four strongest teams receive a 2 seed, and the ranking continues all the way down to the 16 seeds. Then the teams are divided into four regions of 16 teams.

The tournament is set up so that the strongest seeds play the weakest seeds. The 1 seeds play the 16 seeds, the 2 seeds play the 15 seeds, and so on. This is why it's a big boost for a team to be a high seed; they face the teams with the weakest records who will probably be the easiest to beat. The team that loses is out of the tournament and the winner advances to the next round. Because of this format the tournament moves quickly. Forty-eight games of basketball are played in the first four days of the tournament; that's a total of 32 hours of basketball — if none of the games go into overtime!

If the tournament were set up perfectly, the higher seeded team would always win and advance to the next round. In reality, this never happens. There are always upsets, and that's part of what makes watching the tournament so much fun. Every year people fill out brackets and try to predict when teams will win and lose. They compare their guesses with their friends and compete to see who can get the most right.

Confusing Recruits

This college team is recruiting new players by sending out an e-mail, but it looks like some letters got mixed up on the way. Can you figure out what the message says? Here's a hint: The letters T, E, A, and M have been replaced with other letters.

Hollo Biskocbill Lovors,

Wo will bo visicing your cicy cho lisc Cuosdiy of chis ponch. Wo iro looking for sopo now playors. Copo ouc and soo if you iro good onough co join cho coip!

Koop shoocing!

— Cho Coich

RATING RECRUITS

Blue chip is the term used to describe a top player coming out of high school who is being recruited.