Some people undoubtedly turn on their televisions during March and don’t know why college basketball is being played at noon on a Thursday. Here’s the answer.
If you are like millions of people around the globe, you love college basketball. If you are like another set of million of people, you have no idea what the heck is going on when you turn on the television expecting to see Young and the Restless, only to have it bumped for a showdown between Duke and Belmont.
So what is this March Madness nonsense? Well, it’s a 68-team college basketball tournament that is played out from mid-March through the second Monday in April. If you want more detail, the men’s tournament is broadcast across four networks including TruTV, TNT, CBS and TBS. The women’s tournament is shown on the ESPN family of networks, and also features 68 teams. That tourney ends on the second Tuesday of April.
All told, the reason March Madness has become the term which defines the tournaments is the crazy nature of them. For every team involved, it’s single elimination, which means one loss sends a team packing. The seeds for each team are 1-16 (there are four brackets and four play-in games, thus the 68 teams), with the lower number denoting the better team.
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If you’re irate that the daytime programming is being messed with, hang tight. You are only going to have to deal with it for the next pair of Thursdays and Fridays. After that, you are home free with all of the networks going back to their originally scheduled programming.