March Madness is the nickname for the NCAA College Basketball Championship Tournament. The tournament starts in March and runs throughout the whole month. The term March Madness usually refers to the beginning of the conference championships. These tournaments award an automatic bid to the winners of each one. This allows teams that normally would not have a chance to make the NCAA Tournament a chance to get in. There have been many times when teams upset the favorites and win the whole thing.
When the NCAA tournament begins, sixty-five teams have a chance to win the tournament. The two lowest seeded teams play each other in a play-in game. The first round of the tournament is played over the first two days. There are usually four games being played at a time and games are played all day. Many upsets occur during this first round. Usually the biggest upset occurs when a small school from a small conference beats one of the biggest schools from one of the best conferences. Small school teams that make it far in the tournament are known as Cinderella teams. One of the more recent Cinderella teams was George Mason.
In 2006, George Mason was an eleven seed that made it all the way to the Final Four. George Mason came from the Colonial Athletic Association and had earned their first at-large bid in nineteen years. In the first round, they beat Michigan St., who had reached the Final Four just one year before. In the second round they beat North Carolina, who had won the championship the year before. George Mason went on to beat two more teams before losing to Florida in the Final Four.
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