Team assignments and scheduling for the NCAA basketball tournament

Abstract

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) organizes a men's basketball tournament every March to determine the national champion for the current season. In organizing the tournament, the emphasis is typically on selection of the most deserving teams to participate and providing a fair, equitable environment in which to play that result in a true, undisputed champion for the season. However, there are growing concerns of dwindling actual attendance at tournament games and increasing financial burden on the NCAA related to reimbursable team travel expenses. In this paper, we describe the development of an integer program designed to optimize team assignments in the sense of minimizing the distance travelled by teams to game sites and the corresponding travel costs. The goal is to increase tournament accessibility to fans as well as lessen the financial impact to the NCAA while maintaining the integrity of the tournament. We test our model against actual tournament assignments from the past 5 years. Results show consistent and significant cost savings and reductions in distance travelled without compromising the fairness and structure of the tournament. Overall, we demonstrate the usefulness of the model in both operational and strategic business decisions.