This excerpt of "Bracketology: March Madness, College Basketball, and the Creation of a National Obsession," by Joe Lunardi, is presented with permission from Triumph Books. For more information or to order a copy, visit Triumph Books, Bookshop, Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Perhaps the most common Bracketology myth is that the Selection Committee wants to see rivals, who won't schedule each other during the regular season, play in their tournament. Think Kansas vs. Missouri, Texas vs. Texas A&M, or a current rivalry that wasn't played for years like Kentucky vs. Louisville. I don't know what it was like in the really old days before the 64-team field came into existence. There's not much of a historical record of the committee process from those years, and there was certainly no Selection Show. The athletic director got a call from somebody saying his school was in the NCAA Tournament, playing so-and-so at fill-in-the-blank arena. If the team won, it advanced, and someone informed the school who it was playing next.
That's pretty much how the NIT was administered until the NCAA took it over in 2005 and gave it a bracket of its own. Before that the NIT process was literally: let's see who wins and figure out the best matchups for the next round. It wasn't even seeded. It was kind of based on geography. And gate appeal was paramount as an attempt to get the most attractive teams to Madison Square Garden.
