Does anyone know when the Mens' NCAA Tournament begins?
Thanks!
Becky

Tuesday, March 13.

Are you sure about Tuesday? I have never seen NCAA men's start on Tuesday. It is always a Thursday, noon start. This would be a first in my memory.

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH!!!
 

Thursday, March 15th @ Noon, only on CBS!

the extra game between teams 64 and 65 is tuesday, 1st rd. starts thursday-everyone knows about the extra automatic bid situation this year that makes it be 65 teams-if not, go to espn.com or something for a more logical explanation than i could give

Bob, I stand corrected - thanks Matt. From the NCAA Final Four Website:

The field for the NCAA men's basketball tournament will expand by one next season with an "opening-round" game the Tuesday before the first round begins.
The NCAA, which has confirmed the 65-team field, said the winner of the game between two of the lower-ranked conferences will move into the brackets as a No. 16 seed.

The tournament field is expanding because 31 conferences will receive automatic bids next year, two more than last season. The committee always selects at least 34 at-large teams.

The additional automatic bids will go to the year-old Mountain West Conference and the Western Athletic Conference, which didn't have one last season after eight members left to form the Mountain West.

The Division I men's basketball committee is recommending the opening-round game be played on Tuesday, March 13, at the University of Dayton Arena, which is a host site for first- and second-round games.

Bahhhh! That doesn't count!
 

Whoever wins is just going to get plummeted by the #1 seed! :D

Uhh - why not choose only 33 at-large teams to make it 64??? I guess that would be too simple?

I'm sure that there is something else here that I am missing, but it certainly seems weird...

Teams that can't get a bid continue to make these little, no-account conferences to get an auto bid. New ones seem to form every year. Each new conference takes away an at-large bid from a good team and adds another 16-seed level team into the tournament. I don't know what the total at-large bids was ten years ago, but it was probably closer to 40. I think that the NCAA finally just said enough is enough.

I know the NCAA is a weird bunch. But that is what happens when you rule by committee. Any Committee. That said, the WAC got an automatic birth last year but the Mountain West did not. This year they do and by doing so, they didn't take away an at large birth. My feeling is they didn't need to do that because last year two Mountain west teams got into the tournament with at-large births so I don't believe by adding the conference you were taking anything away from the at-large process. Now if the RMAC(a Div 2 conference) were to be added to the tournament, then we would have to add an at large birth. There is no way any of those teams could have made the tournament otherwise.

Maybe the solotuion is to just go to a 96 or 128 team tournament.

Then CBS would give us 8 boxes to watch on one screen instead of four!

Sounds good to me - more games to officiate!