how many teams compete in the ncaa tournament
NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, also informally known and branded as NCAA March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 college basketball teams from the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), to determine the national championship. The tournament was created in 1939 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and was the idea of The Ohio State University coach Harold Olsen.[1] Played mostly during March, it has become one of the most famous annual sporting events in the United States.
NCAA Division I Schools must field teams in at least seven sports for men and seven for women or six for men and eight for women, with at least two team sports for each gender.[4] Division I schools must meet minimum financial aid awards for their athletics program, and there are maximum financial aid awards for each sport that a Division I school cannot exceed. Several other NCAA sanctioned minimums and differences that distinguish Division I from Divisions II and III.[4] Each playing season has to be represented by each gender as well. There are contest and participant minimums for each sport, as well as scheduling criteria. For sports other than football and basketball, Division I schools must play 100 percent of the minimum number of contests against Division I opponentsâ€”anything over the minimum number of games has to be 50 percent Division I. Men's and women's basketball teams have to play all but two games against Division I teams; for men, they must play one-third of all their contests in the home arena.[5]
NBA playoffs The National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs are a best-of-seven elimination tournament among 16 teams in the Eastern Conference and Western Conference (called divisions, pre-1970), ultimately deciding the league's season champion in the NBA Finals.
FIFA World Cup The current format of the competition involves a qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, to determine which teams qualify for the tournament phase, which is often called the World Cup Finals. After this, 32 teams, including the automatically qualifying host nation(s), compete in the tournament phase for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month.