Teammates Jamie Skeen #31 Harvey Hale #4 James Johnson #23 and Jeff Teague #0 of the Wake Forest Demon Deacons celebrate after defeating the Duke Blue Devils at Lawrence Joel Coliseum on February 17, 2008 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

Watch NCAA March Madness Online for Free

NCAA March Madness® on Demand allows you to watch LIVE game broadcasts of CBS Sports television coverage of the NCAA Championship on your computer for FREE!


This year, for the first time ever, you'll be able to watch every game of the NCAA Championship live online for free. All 63 games, from the First Round through the Final Four including the Championship Game, will be available with NCAA March Madness on Demand — so you'll never have to miss a single shot.
NCAA March Madness on Demand is 100% free
Live games streaming on your broadband-connected computer
Enjoy Championship highlights, recaps, and archived video
640x360 widescreen video player
Exclusive halftime show

March Madness Around the Web

Will the mayhem at the 2008 big dance live up to the past? Stick around...plus, check out a great collection of party ideas, trivia and other related fun stuff to help you celebrate another exciting, roller-coaster year of manic March Madness ...

NCAA Men's Basketball - The official site for the latest updates, scores, ranking and related pictures and feature stories, interviews and more.

NCAA Basketball - CBS Sportsline - The official network TV station with headline reports & predictions, opinion and news, plus the latest scores at a glance and key dates for major games.

ESPN Mens' Basketball - Cable TV network coverage featuring picture galleries, video clips, updated blogs, along with the latest college basketball headline news & scores.


NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship - Wikipedia's excellent overview of March Madness with tons of stats, facts and incredible depth of trivia answers.

CollegeHoops.net - NCAA Basketball Tournament - One-stop browsing for daily news & updates, odds & predictions, how to's on winning that office pool, plus tons more on March Madness history, stats & trivia.

Sweet 16 Schedule

Sweet 16

March 27 and March 29

East Regional : Charlotte Bobcats Arena, Charlotte, North Carolina (Host: University of North Carolina at Charlotte)
West Regional : US Airways Center, Phoenix, Arizona (Host: Arizona State University)

March 28 and March 30

Midwest Regional: Ford Field, Detroit, Michigan (Host: University of Detroit Mercy)
South Regional : Reliant Stadium, Houston, Texas (Hosts: University of Houston and Rice University)

Selection Sunday & Opening Rounds

Seeds will be announced live on Selection Sunday - March 16, 2008 on CBS at 6PM ET when the pairings for the 65 men's teams are revealed.

Then it's off to the first and second round games and the Sweet 16 regionals:

March 20 and March 22

Honda Center, Anaheim, California (Host: Big West Conference)
Pepsi Center, Denver, Colorado (Hosts: Colorado State University and Mountain West Conference)
Qwest Center Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska (Hosts: Creighton University and Missouri Valley Conference)
Verizon Center, Washington, D.C. (Host: Georgetown University)

March 21 and March 23

BJCC Arena, Birmingham, Alabama (Host: Southeastern Conference)
Alltel Arena, North Little Rock, Arkansas (Host: University of Arkansas at Little Rock)
RBC Center, Raleigh, North Carolina (Host: North Carolina State University)
St. Pete Times Forum, Tampa, Florida (Host: University of South Florida)

March Madness Brackets

Brackets of March Madness

In recent years, the term Final Four has come into use for the last four teams in other elimination tournaments. Tournaments which use Final Four include the Euroleague in basketball, national basketball competitions in several European countries and the now-defunct European Hockey League. Together with the name Final Four, these tournaments have adopted an NCAA-style format in which the four surviving teams compete in a single-elimination tournament held in one place, typically, during one weekend.



The derivative term "Frozen Four" is used by the NCAA to refer to the final rounds of the Division I men's and women's ice hockey tournaments. Until 1999, it was a popular nickname for the last two rounds of the hockey tournament; officially, it was also called the Final Four.


[edit] Tournament trends

March Madness Defined (Part 2)

March Madness

March Madness is a popular term for season-ending basketball tournaments played in March (Brent Musburger is generally regarded as the individual who first used that phrase in conjunction with the college tournament, using it during CBS Sports' coverage of the tourney back in 1982 - see below), especially those conducted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and various state high school associations. The phrase was not associated with the college tournament in 1939, when an Illinois official wrote "A little March Madness [may] contribute to sanity." March Madness is also a registered trademark, held jointly by the NCAA and the Illinois High School Association. The trademark has sparked a pair of high-profile courtroom battles in recent years.

March Madness refers to the frenzy these tournaments ignite among sports fans and, at least at the college level, sports gamblers. As it applies to college basketball, the term originally referred to the conference basketball tournaments, which occur in March just before the NCAA tournament begins, but in recent years has been used to refer to the NCAA tournament itself (the first weekend of which involves some 49 games, and which actually runs into early April). The term is now used in reference to both the men's and women's tournaments. The Big Dance also refers exclusively to the NCAA Tournaments to distinguish them from the conference tournaments and the NIT.

As a tournament ritual, the winning team cuts down the net at the end of the regional championship game (and the national championship game). Each player cuts a single strand off of the net for themselves, commemorating their victory, with the head coach cutting the last strand and claiming the net itself. Furthermore, the regional champs (starting in 2006) receive a bronze plated NCAA Regional Championship trophy (previously given to only the Final Four teams that did not make the championship game), and the National Champions also receive a gold plated NCAA National Championship trophy. The loser of the championship game receives a silver plated National Runner-Up trophy for second place.

The National Association of Basketball Coaches also presents a more elaborate marble/crystal trophy to the top-ranked team in its end-of-season coaches' poll, which is invariably the same as the NCAA championship game winner. This award, currently sponsored as the "Siemens Trophy", is not affiliated with the NCAA and is presented at a later press conference.

What is March Madness

Wikipedia's Definition of March Madness

The NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship is a single elimination tournament held each spring featuring 65[1] college basketball teams in the United States. Colloquially known as March Madness (as the tournament takes place mainly during the month of March) or the Big Dance (as opposed to the now smaller and less prestigious NIT), the tournament takes place over 3 weeks at sites across the United States, and the national semifinals (the Final Four) have become one of the nation's most prominent sporting events.

Since its 1939 inception it has built a legacy that includes dynasty teams and dramatic underdog stories. In recent years, friendly wagering on the event has become something of a national pastime, spawning countless "office pools" that attract expert fans and novices alike. All games of the tournament are broadcast on the CBS broadcast television network in the United States, except for the Opening Round game (or "play-in game" as it has been called), which aired on TNN in 2001, and ESPN since 2002.

The tournament bracket is made up of conference tournament champions from each Division I conference, which receive automatic bids. The remaining slots are at-large berths, with teams chosen by an NCAA selection committee. The selection process and tournament seedings are based on several factors, including team rankings, win-loss records and RPI data.

Two low-seeded teams (typically teams with poor records that qualified by winning their conference tournament championships) play the "opening round" game to determine which will advance into the first round of the tournament, with the winner advancing to play the top seed in one of the four regions. The opening Round game was added in 2001 and has been played in University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio each subsequent year. The opening round is considered part of the tournament and is often referred to as a "play-in" game.

A Most Outstanding Player honor is awarded by the Associated Press at the end of each tournament.

At 11 national titles, UCLA currently holds the record for the most NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championships. University of Kentucky is second, with 7 national titles.