March Madness and college basketball are a duo as iconic as peanut butter and jelly. Each spring, the interest of millions of hearts and minds is captured, and they sit around the television to view this thrilling tournament. It’s a tournament that determines the best college basketball teams in the United States, all in the month of March. According to the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) website, over 60 to 100 million brackets are filled out every year. However, the odds of a perfect bracket? They’re said to be 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, or 1 in 9.2 quintillion, if you’re just guessing, and 1 in 120.2 billion if you are going off knowledge of basketball.

The tournament’s history goes back to 1939 when the NCAA first organized a basketball championship. It was a men’s tournament that began with only eight teams but over time as it grew in popularity, the size grew alongside it, as well as having a women’s tournament that began in 1982. The name was coined by an official at an Illinois High School, Henry V. Porter, in that very same year of 1939. Now, after nearly 90 years of its existence, the competition is as popular as ever with 68 teams participating, and only one who will emerge as the champion of March Madness.

Over time it’s grown into more than just a basketball tournament. It’s a cultural phenomenon and it’s bigger and better than ever in 2025. Junior at Elkhart High School            Alex Addison says “The buzzer beaters, watching an underdog win against all odds, there’s just so much hype during March Madness that keeps everyone coming back and filling out brackets every year.”

From its humble beginnings to one of the most watched sports events in the country, March Madness remains one of the most famous and exciting sports traditions.