The NCAA Tournament gets under way with Sunday’s selection show.   The games don’t start until four days later, but this phenomenon known as March Madness starts on Sunday.

March Madness, by the way, is one of the terms you will never see on this site again.   The NCAA Tournament has become an unofficial haven for clichés and meaningless facts that television has successfully implanted into the American sports lexicon.

Cinderella's name will be invoked a lot during the NCAA Tournament; presumably she has her dancing shoes on

It is our job to point out and define the worthless terminology that will be showered on us innocent viewers, so that we can discard them from our consciousness with a dismissive wave.

1. Defining the terms you will hear but should never repeat if you respect the English language.

– The Big Dance – The NCAA Tournament, also known to insiders by its shortened form “The Dance.”

 – Going Dancing – What a team is doing (figuratively, that is) when it learns it will be playing in the NCAA Tournament

  – Putting Their Dancing Shoes On – A more long-winded and odious way of saying a team is going dancing, i.e., headed to the NCAA Tournament.

 – Bubble – The uncomfortable position of a team that is on the borderline between getting into the NCAA Tournament and not getting in, forcing its players and coaches to sweat bullets when the selections are announced.

– Popping a bubble – A late-season loss that seems to eliminate a team from receiving an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament.

   — Firmly on the bubble – A nonsensical way of trying to emphasize that a team is on the border of earning an NCAA Tournament berth.    An equally ridiculous parallel in college football would be the term “legitimate Heisman candidate.”

  – Cinderella – A team that has surprising success in the NCAA Tournament, especially when it references a team that does not have much of a basketball reputation.   The origin, apparently, is that the team has become glamorous as if by magic, and that the good times are only temporary, until reality (or midnight) interrupts the dream.

 – Punching a Ticket – The act of earning an automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament, similar to a person who has his ticket punched at a movie theater to be officially admitted.  

– Sweet Sixteen – A trite description of the 16 teams that make it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.   How it relates to a girl’s 16^th birthday has been lost over time and continues to puzzle entymologists.

– Elite Eight – Because the term “Sweet Sixteen” caught on, television subsequently created a contrived phrase to describe the eight teams in the quarterfinals.   A catchy term was needed to represent the round between the Sweet 16 and the Final Four, and this is what they came up with.   Crazy Eights or Pieces of Eight or Eight is Enough or the Great Eight presumably were discarded after trying them out on focus groups.   Elite Eight?  Well, both words start with an E, so apparently that makes it catchy.

 – Eye Test – A term added in  2010 that refers to the subjective response by viewers, particularly by the tournament selection committee, to seeing a particular team play.   If the team just looks lousy, it hurts their chances of being selected for the NCAA Tournament, regardless of the wins and losses.  If a team “Passes the eye test” it looked pretty good in the game, whether it won or lost.  It has become the cool phrase among TV folks lately.

   (Capsules of all 65 teams will be posted at this site shortly after the selections are announced on Sunday.)

2. The No. 1 seeds.

   So much publicity is given to the four teams that get the No. 1 seeds, you would think that a No. 1 seed earns a $1 million bonus or gets a bye into the semifinals or at least gets to meet the President.   In fact, it means absolutely nothing.   It merely rewards the egos of four teams who can say, “We got a No. 1 seed and you didn’t, nya,nya.”   There is nothing that makes a No. 1 seed more favorable than a No. 2 seed.   One might point out that a No. 1 seed has never lost a first-round game, while it has happened four times to No. 2 seeds.   But, believe me, that has nothing to do with the drive to get a No. 1 seed, which is simply a status thing.  Television has caught on to the notion that people care about the No. 1 seeds, so it has artificially promoted its significance.   If one single player or coach complains that it gets a No. 2 seed instead of a No. 1 seed, that person should be suspended for the postseason.

3. There are four postseason tournaments.

Bonus points for anyone who can name the four teams who won Division I postseason men’s basketball tournament last season.   Most cannot even name the tournaments.    Besides the 65-team NCAA Tournament and the 32-team National Invitation Tournament, there is the 16-team College Basketball Invitational (or CBI)) and 16-team Collegeinsider.com Postseason Tournament (or CIT).    That’s 129 teams, which may seem like a lot, but it is still only 37 percent of the 347 Division I basketball teams.   College bowl games involve more than half of the country’s Division I football teams.

How significant are these basketball tournaments?  Well, Oregon State got into the CBI with a 13-17 record, then proceeded to win the thing.  Oregon State coach Craig Robinson showed his joy at finishing 18-18 in the photo at left (Photo by Brent Wojahn of the Oregonian).  In case, you’re wondering, Penn State won the NIT and Old Dominion won the CIT.

4. At this point (March 11), it appears that Connecticut, UCLA, Arizona, Indiana and North Carolina will not be in the NCAA Tournament. 

 It’s a wonder an NCAA Tournament can even be held without those five.   For Arizona it will mean an end to a streak of 25 straight NCAA Tournament appearances, which was longest active streak and just two off the record of 27 held by North Carolina.  So when someone asks you how you expect UConn to do in the NCAA Tournament this year, don’t bite.

5. The power of the No. 12 seed.

No. 1 seeds are 100-0 in first-round games, No. 2 seeds are 96-4, and so on down the line.   The best chance for significant upsets are the first-round games between the No. 5 and No. 12 seeds.  The No. 12 seeds have won those games 33 percent of the time, or one out every three games.   Last season three of the four No. 12 seeds beat the No. 5 seeds in their openers, and at least one No. 12 seed has won a first-round game in eight of the past 10 NCAA Tournaments.   Remember that when filling out your bracket, or at least mention that minutiae to impress your friends at cocktail parties.  (We love the word minutiae.)

6. A monkey could fill out the bracket better than I can.

Exasperation sets in when your picks go south while the office secretary picks up $200 by picking teams based on their mascot (oh, Owls are so cute) or because a friend attended that school (Didn’t Uncle Jeremiah go to Wofford for a semester?).  You swear you will make your picks randomly next year, because it works just as well.   Don’t expect a perfect record by doing it that way, though, because there are  9,223,372,036,854,775,808 possibilities in a 64-team event.   And the NCAA Tournament has 65 teams.    So getting every selection right by picking them all out of a hat are more than 9.2 quintillion to 1.   Yes, quintillion is a real number.  It come right after quadrillion and just before sextillion, which has nothing to do with sex.   For perspective, the chances of getting all the picks right by choosing the winners randomly are about the same as Jim Boeheim cracking a smile.