The Basketball Tournament: 32 teams of former college stars compete for $500,000

March Madness unites college basketball fans across the country with a 68-team tournament to determine the NCAA champion and while its not March, The Basketball Tournament (TBT) is doing their best in the inaugural tournament to pit some former college basketball legends in a 32-team tournament for a shot to win $500,000.

"“The most appealing things about March Madness are the high stakes, the win-or-go-home format and how you can read the emotion of the players,” tournament founder Jonathan Mugar tells Mashable. “We wanted to couple that with this idea that any elite or non-elite player could enter — that the format could be opened up so that absolutely anyone who wants to play can play.”"

The great thing about this tournament is that it’s open to anybody who can get the necessary support to make the field of 32. Whether you’re a former college basketball stud or the best player on your local church league, you can participate in TBT.

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Teams are built much like a college or NBA team as each has a general manager who selects the players who also handles coaching duties and recruits fans through the TBT website. Every fan must then fill out a form to become official. The teams who rounded out the field of 32 has to recruit at least 100 of these fans to prove that fans can support teams via social media.

Credit: TheTournament.com /

Scottie Reynolds, Dante Cunningham and the rest of the 2009 Villanova Final Four Team are playing in TBT as is the 2010 Cornell Sweet 16 team and teams from Wisconsin, Siena, Temple, Princeton, Maryland, and Notre Dame will take place in the tournament that tips off June 6th from Philadelphia University and continues until the champion is crowned June 28th.

View the complete 32-team bracket.

The site for the championship game is to be determined by the two participating teams who will nominate potential venues in their home cities with fans voting online to decide which team will win the right to host the game and have homecourt advantage for the $500,000 prize.

Other notable players competing in TBT are Rashad McCants, Marshall Henderson, Hakim Warrick, Josh Boone, Ryan Gomes, Sean Singletary, Dahntay Jones, Quincy Douby, Austin Freeman, Chris Wright, Ryan Wittman, Aquille Carr, and Anthony Ireland.

24 teams were accepted into TBT with an automatic bid. On May 8th eight at-large teams were selected to round out the field of 32 with the top four teams picking their first round opponent.

The success in the first year should result in the second year seeing a bigger pool of teams trying to gain entrance into the field and we could see another well-represented player pool eager to be the last team standing and take home half a million, and the purse could grow as the league grows.

"“I certainly want this to be an annual event, and I want this to be the smallest amount that we ever pay the winning the team,” Mugar tells Basketball Insiders. “We want to keep growing it, getting more players involved and having higher-stakes games. We want to be able to pay more teams even more money [in the future]."

“I certainly want this to be an annual event, and I want this to be the smallest amount that we ever pay the winning the team,” Mugar said. “We want to keep growing it, getting more players involved and having higher-stakes games. We want to be able to pay more teams even more money [in the future].
Read more at http://www.basketballinsiders.com/nba-pm-the-basketball-tournament-is-here/#wXIqjV568RQIFkxX.99

This is an intriguing idea that can help players get back into the NBA as the competition looks really great on paper. It’s a combination of March Madness, fantasy sports and social media to make The Basketball Tournament an exciting event for hoops junkies who are craving as much action on the hardwood and you don’t see that at the end of June.

You can purchase general admission tickets to the event here. Adults are $20 and children tickets are $10.

If you want to watch the action and catch up with some former college basketball greats and other names from the past but can’t get to Philadelphia TBT in person, there may be another option for you as Mugar is hopeful of being able to stream the games, at least the championship game.