Tournament Format

The Madness and Civilization tournament is a single elimination tournament. Teams representing twenty-four periods in the history of Western Civilization, most of them single centuries, will be seeded into four brackets of six teams each. The teams in each bracket will be seeded 1 to 6, with the #1 and #2 seeds in each bracket receiving a first round bye. The first round will consist of games between the #3 and #6 seeds and the #4 and #5 seeds. In the second round, the #1 in each bracket will play the lowest-seeded team which advanced, and the #2 seed will play the other team; the winners of these games will then play for a chance to advance to the Final Four.

The host sites for the four brackets are London, Paris, Athens, and Jerusalem. The Final Four will be held in Rome. The following teams have earned automatic bids by virtue of being conference champions:

Hellenistic Conference: 5th Century BC
Roman Empire Conference: 1st Century BC
Early Middle Ages Conference: 6th Century AD
High Middle Ages Conference: 13th Century AD
Modern Conference: 16th Century AD

The other 19 teams, as well as the seedings, will be announced on Selection Sunday, March 22.