page_title: NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament
section_title: First Four
hierarchical_section_title: NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament / Current tournament format / Rounds / First Four
caption_attribution_description: English: UD Arena
context_page_description: The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, also known and branded as NCAA March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 college basketball teams from the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, to determine the national championship. The tournament was created in 1939 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and was the idea of Ohio State coach Harold Olsen. Played mostly during March, it has become one of the most famous annual sporting events in the United States.
  It has become extremely common in popular culture to predict the outcomes of each game, even among non-sports fans; it is estimated that tens of millions of Americans participate in a bracket pool contest every year. Mainstream media outlets such as ESPN, CBS Sports and Fox Sports host tournaments online where contestants can enter for free. Also, there are many sites that cater to corporate marketing and public relations to get in on the excitement such as BigTourney.com.
context_section_description: First held during 2011, the First Four are games between the four lowest-ranked at-large teams and the four lowest-ranked automatic-bid (conference-champion) teams.
  First Four At-large seeds
  Note: Each year, the four lowest-ranked automatic-bid teams compete to receive No. 16 seeds, while the four lowest-ranked at-large teams compete to be No. 11 seeds. From 2011 through 2014, the at-large teams competed in the First-Four games for a No. 11, 12, 13, or 14 seed in one of the regions. The table below shows the years in which each of those four seeds were claimed by one of the two at-large winners.
caption: The University of Dayton Arena, which has hosted all First Four games since the round's inception in 2011, as well as its precursor, the single "play-in" game held from 2001 to 2010. As of 2019, the arena has hosted 123 tournament games, the most of any venue.
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