Ever wonder what the decision-making process involves when the NCAA comes around to divvying up teams to fill the brackets each year? It’s taken very seriously, and the committee who heads up the selection process is actually confined to a hotel for the entire process – not unlike a jury for a high-profile sensitive court case. The committee pours over a number of factors (below) as they huddle together in secrecy to come up with the 64 teams that will end up comprising the current year’s brackets. For starters, each committee member submits a handful of obvious stand outs that should absolutely be “seeded.” However, each member’s list cannot include their host school, or the school they represent during the rest of the season. If it turns out that all eight members put a team on their list, that team is included automatically into the tournament.

The other criterion that the eight-member selection committee uses includes:
• How the team ranked nationally in the polls
• Team’s overall conference record
• Team’s overall record on the road
• How many wins they had against ranked opponents
• How they strong (or weak) they finished during the regular season
• And of course an algorithm known as the “Rating Percentage Index (RPI)”

Unfortunately if your team is excluded from this year’s tournament, no amount of appealing or protest will help – as there is no official appeals process. Simply put, the committee’s decision on who gets in and who loses out is final. As a consolation prize, some of those teams who didn’t quite make it into the Big Show are invited instead to play in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT), which invites 32 other teams for a chance at postseason play.