What the NCAA Tournament has in store for us this year

When you hear the name of a country you can immediately associate it with something, you hear England you think Big Ben, you hear Germany you think Beer and you can associate a lot of things to the USA. Food, landmarks, people but one of the biggest stereotypes is sports. American football and basketball are amongst the most popular ones.

Every year when spring comes around the NCAA's Division one has this tournament where the best of it's member colleges take part and play against each other. Because it's a single elimination tournament at the end you get the best college team in the United States. This might not sound like much at first but it's an extremely important part of American culture. At one point in time college sports, basketball especially was considered to be more pure than professional sports and many fans believed that the professional teams are just in for the money and that college basketball remains true to the game. This is how college basketball became so popular and why people each year fill out brackets and probably will be filling out a 2012 NCAA Tournament bracket as well.

Just to show you how much of an impact this tournament has on American society, after people get the 2012 NCAA Tournament Schedule it is estimated, because it happens each year or at least that's the myth that business each year lose 1.7 billion dollars or more because of March Madness and the productivity drop that results from it. There are many reasons why this is just a myth and not correct but this isn't the place to talk about that. The point is college basketball remains and becomes more popular with each passing year and it was and remains a very important part of American culture.

About the MVC Tournament

In the United States higher education has one thing, while it isn't unique and other colleges around the world have it too in the form and organization that it has its unique. Generally it's called college athletic conference and there are many of them in the US. Basically these came to be during the early days of American football, because the game used to be so rough and there were many injuries, even deaths in some cases it was decided that athletic conferences should be formed that would impose rules on how the games can be played so that injuries and things like cheating would be prevented.

One of these conferences that still exist to this day is the MCV or in its full name the Missouri Valley Conference. As you might guess by its name it is made up from colleges in the Midwest US and it's also part of the NCAA's Division I. The conference itself dates back to 1907 and back then it was known as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association or shortened MVIAA and to this day it is the second oldest Division I college conference in the United States. While a lot of people are excited about the 2012 MVC Tournament Bracket most people don't know that the larger schools from the MVIAA or at least most of them would later on form the Big Eight Conference and the smaller schools together formed the MCV.

Another interesting fact is that the MCV hasn't sponsored football since 1985 which is quite rare for a conference of its size these days but there are still some members that do have football programs within its ranks. One should also not confuse the Missouri Valley Conference with the Missouri Valley Football Conference because while they do share a similar name and even share their headquarters they aren't the same conference.

What is it with these names (Big 12 and Big Ten)

One of the strangest and for some people like myself very annoying names when it comes to college conferences are the Bigs. What I mean by that are the Big Ten and Big 12 so why I am so annoyed by these names, seems decent, right ?

Well the problem is that the Big 12 Conference has 10 members and the Big Ten conference has 12 members!
Of course nobody can predict how many members it will have in the long run but that is one thing one has to consider when forming something like that!

Of course now changing the name is somewhat problematic but it can really become confusing when you think about it, about the only useful way to know the difference between the two are the locations. You can't know the difference when it comes to members because those change all the time as well but thanks to the location you can be pretty sure which is which.

The Big 12 conference is located in Central US while the Big Ten is located in the Midwestern part of the States. Members of the Big 12 conference are located in Texas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The Big Ten (or is it 12, see how confusing this is?) is also the oldest college athletic conference in Division I. It has become a 12 member conference since Penn State joined in 1990 and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln joined in 2011.

Hopefully by the time the 2012 Big 12 basketball tournament bracket is out a new team will be added to one of those conferences so that it at least isn't vice versa when it comes to the number of members. If one of them had 11 members at least they could be easily distinguished from one another.

Upcoming Big East Changes

In 2011 it was announced that the Big East is considering expanding 12 schools into the football conference and Commissioner John Marinatto has already started discussions with the schools in question. This expansion is the first in 3 years since the expansion of 2009.

TCU made a format statement that they will accept the invitation into the Big 12 which means that they only have six football teams and that they are in real need of rebuilding their membership to increase. Another school that is very likely to get accepted into the Big East is the UCF which according to sources IS being seriously considered.

There have also been rumors that Memphis and East Carolina are among the candidates to be accepted into the Big East. The thing is before accepting more teams the conference first wants to see if they will get a format Yes from the Texas A&M because if they do they won't be adding more teams but if they don't they will be on the lockout for another strong team.

The Big East is also a noteworthy basketball conference being the longest running conference in college basketball and having twelve teams until 2009 when it was expanded to 16.

For those of you who aren't die hard college basketball fans here is an interesting fact. The Big East is the only college basketball conference that had all of its games broadcast on national TV and even got a 3D broadcast starting with 2011.

If you're really excited about the upcoming 2012 Big East basketball tournament bracket keep a close watch on our site, we will have the first brackets online!