March Madness grips States

Andre Hutson plays for champions Michigan State

BBC Sport Online's Kevin Asseo explains the enormity of the US college basketball championships.

This time of year means only one thing to American sport fans - the NCAA Basketball Tournament, or "March Madness" as it is better known.

March Madness is a competition between the nation's 64 best university basketball teams.

When it reaches the semi-finals, or "Final Four", the hype surrounding the games is second only to the Super Bowl or World Series.

Thirty of the teams in the field gain automatic entry by fulfilling certain criteria, such as winning the championship of the league in which they play, while the other 34 teams are invited to play.

The announcement of the field is a hugely anticipated event, since the selection of the invitees is a secretive process that makes the Florida recount in the recent presidential election look simple by comparison.

A 10-member panel, called the NCAA Selection Committee, spends a week behind closed doors sifting through all the teams potentially worthy of an invitation.

Seed mystery

Finally, after much debate, they unveil their choices live on national television.

Absolutely no-one other than that 10-person group, including the teams themselves, knows who will be picked until then.

That announcement was made last Sunday 11 March, and the games begin on Thursday 15 March.

In addition to picking the teams that will play, the Selection Committee sets up the draw, placing teams into four separate 16-team brackets, or 'regions', and assigning them seeds.

The brackets are seeded separately, with teams ranked 1-16 in each region.

The biggest anticipation regarding the seeding revolves around who will be deemed a number one seed in each bracket.

This year, the number one seeds were awarded to Stanford, Duke, Illinois, and Michigan State - the defending champions.

In the days between the draw and the start of play, offices around the country are buzzing with people forming betting pools and filling out their 'bracket sheets' - predictions of how they think the tournament will progress.

It is easily the most wagered-on event in America next to the Super Bowl, with virtually every office in the land having some kind of pool.

'David-versus-Goliath'

Even folks who would ordinarily have no interest in sport participate, with everyone eager to share their opinion about which team they believe will emerge as champions.

When the games begin, it is easy to see why the March Madness nickname has stuck.

The first week features wall-to-wall action, with 48 games in the first four days.

Despite the attention garnered by the Final Four stage of the proceedings, many fans prefer to watch the early rounds of the tournament, when the lower seeds match up against the top-ranked teams.

These rounds feature numerous 'David-versus-Goliath' games, with teams from tiny rural colleges playing against large university teams.

The bigger school's team usually wins, of course, but any upsets that do occur are sure to grab the headlines across the nation.

After two weeks of seemingly non-stop action, it all boils down to the weekend of the Final Four, beginning on Saturday 31 March, when the four remaining teams battle it out in front of enormous audiences.

For basketball fans, it does not get any better.