Selection Sunday - Picking the Field

Selection Sunday (March 15, 2009) is the day when the NCAA Tournament participants are announced, placed and seeded accordingly. It is known as the selection process. The NCAA committee gathers to select and place 65 teams that they deem worthy of an invitation to the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

The field consists of the following:

Automatic bids - These bids, 31 in all, go to conference champions. Of these bids, 30 go to conference tournament champions. Most conferences have their tournaments on the week preceding Selection Sunday. The Ivy League is the only conference that does not conduct a postseason tournament; in that conference, the regular-season champion receives the automatic bid.

At-large bids - These are schools that the NCAA selection committee deems worthy of a tournament bid. The NCAA tournament has 34 at-large bids available. The "major" conferences of the Big East, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10, and SEC traditionally earn at least 4 bids each in the tournament. The selection committee takes great care, however, to treat teams from "mid-major" and "minor" conferences fairly; however, the selection of a fourth-place (or lower) "major" conference team over a "deserving" second- or third-place "mid-major" conference team always brings out the usual critics charging "bias" on the part of the selection committee.

Click here for more information regarding the NCAA selection process.

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