The Birth of the Bracket: A Short History of the NCAA Tournament's Expansion
From eight teams in 1939 to 68 today, March Madness grew in fits and starts. A short history of how the bracket reached its modern size — and why.
History
The improbable seasons and the long, messy argument over how college sports picks a champion — told with the receipts.
The long argument over how college sports picks a champion, told with the receipts. Three pieces, each built on the record rather than on memory: the statistically improbable seasons that people still misremember, the data history of the walk from the BCS to a twelve-team playoff, and how the NCAA tournament bracket grew into the thing everyone fills out in March. The point of a history section on a numbers site is calibration — nearly every complaint about the current format was made about the one before it, and the record shows which of those complaints turned out to be right. Read these before assuming a present-day debate is new.
From the BCS to the 12-Team Playoff: A Data History of Choosing a Champion
Polls, computers, the BCS, the four-team era, and now twelve teams: how college football's method of picking a champion evolved.
The 10 Most Statistically Improbable Seasons in College Sports History
Cinderella runs, perfect seasons, and collapses that the numbers said shouldn't happen — ranked by how improbable they really were.