(NEXSTAR) – It’s the most exciting time of year for fans of the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Division I Basketball Tournaments — better known as “March Madness” to the majority of sports fans.
Each begins with 68 of the best teams in college basketball until one team is left standing as the National Champion.
To get there, seven rounds of play are held, during which the winners advance and the losers go home.
The first three rounds have rather simple names. It begins with the “First Four,” during which eight teams (chosen by the NCAA tournament selection committee) compete for four (total) spots in the bracket. Then the “Round of 64” tips off, followed immediately by the “Round of 32.”
After that begins what has become known as the “Sweet 16” where teams play for a chance to play in the “Elite Eight.” Much more grandiose in name than the previous rounds, it’s taken as an accomplishment for many schools if they can say they were a “Sweet 16” team or that their college made it to the ‘Elite Eight.’
But where did these nicknames come from? Why aren’t they just called the “Round of 16” or simply the quarterfinals?
To find this out, you’d have to go all the way back to 1936, when, according to the NCAA, a newspaper out of Davenport, Iowa, known as The Davenport Democrat and Leader used the term “Sweet 16” when describing a local high school basketball tournament.
However, it wasn’t until sometime in the late 1980s that CBS commentators began using the nickname “Sweet 16” when the NCAA Basketball Tournament expanded from 53 teams to 64, according to the NCAA.
As for the “Elite Eight,” the term was coined back in 1956 by the Illinois High School Boys Basketball Championship, per the NCAA. After narrowing the number of teams that participated in the tournament from 16 to eight, the Illinois High School Association began using the nickname.
While it’s unknown when exactly the term “Elite Eight” began being used in the mainstream for the NCAA Basketball Tournament, the nickname was trademarked by the March Madness Athletic Association back in 1996.
Teams that can advance past the “Elite Eight” are then welcomed into one of the most prestigious playoffs in sports: the “Final Four.” According to the NCAA, that term was first used in 1975 when a writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that Marquette was ”one of the final four” teams of the 1974 tournament.
A few years later in 1978, the NCAA began using the phrase to refer to the semifinals of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and trademarked the nickname.
