For Many, NCAA Means Championships
The NCAA Holds 88 championships in 23 sports each year.
28 March 2010
The Northern Iowa basketball team celebrates after their win over Kansas in an NCAA second-round college basketball game
STEVE EMBER:
Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.
FAITH LAPIDUS:
And I'm Faith Lapidus. This week on our program, we tell about the largest college sports organization in the United States. The National Collegiate Athletic Association includes colleges and universities, athletic conferences and non-profit organizations. It has over one thousand members. The NCAA sets rules for student athletes and their schools.
It links academic studies, sports, rules and big business. But most Americans think about one thing when they hear NCAA: championships.
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STEVE EMBER:
This month, many Americans are caught up in the yearly tradition of “March Madness.” It describes the excitement over the Men’s and Women’s NCAA National Basketball Championships. The first games began March sixteenth. People join “office pools” in work places around the country — usually to bet on the men’s championship.
Fans in office pools try to predict the winners of each of the sixty-three games and the college basketball champion. They fill out forms called brackets with their choices of which team they think will win. Usually, people bet five or ten dollars. Quang Lam, a Web producer from Virginia, says he is in three pools this year: two for money and one for fun. First prize in one pool is one thousand dollars. Fans used to fill in their brackets on paper. Today, office pools are mostly done on-line. People bet tens of millions of dollars on NCAA tournament games in Las Vegas, Nevada, where gambling is legal. But Americans bet much more in office pools nationwide.
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