Why Doesn’t the NCAA do “March Madness” for Hockey and Football Colleges?

It helps to first examine the origin of that term. It was a nickname for the Indiana state high school basketball championship tournament, and it was (still is) madness because it was a single elimination tournament which every varsity team qualified for (later by division), regardless of season record. It set the tone for adoption of similar postseason basketball play in other states and in NCAA’s expansion of their top division championship to a ridiculous number of entries. The original unofficial college varsity basketball championship was the National Invitation Tournament, a much smaller and shorter event taking place entirely at Madison Square Garden.

Let’s examine why other winter sports don’t have an end-of-season varsity championship that attracts such attention. First of all, there just aren’t audiences as big on average nationwide for other winter varsity sports. Second, the other winter sports tend to have a lot of multi-entry meets that would dilute the impact of a single end-season tournament. For instance, wrestling has almost as many tournaments as matches between 2 schools; swimming is usually contested in matches but has a fair number of meets too. And the duration of individual bouts in wrestling, races in swimming, and events in gymnastics doesn’t allow for the suspense of a closely contested basketball game. Hockey has longer games, but is too regional in interest.

So then let’s at other varsity sports played in other seasons. American football is played too infrequently to allow for large tournaments. Soccer can conveniently have larger tournaments than football, but doesn’t have as much spectator interest in North America. Cross country tends to be contested in big meets that dilute the interest in a championship. Tennis has the most potential for championship tournaments, but intercollegiate tennis doesn’t draw such crowds. Baseball’s varsity season is too short and suffers too greatly in comparison with the pros for its end-of-season tournament to get anywhere like the notice of basketball’s. Lacrosse, again too regional and too short a season to build up interest toward a playoff at the end.

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