How Does Distance Traveled Impact Teams in March Madness
The NCAA tournament is one of the largest and most viewed sporting events in the United States every year. Reasons for this include the fact that it is the only major sporting event who has its playoff in the month of March. This event is better known as “March Madness” because of the time it takes place, and that nickname is a staple in sports and US culture. The tournament invites 68 teams from Division One NCAA Colleges to compete. The teams are split into four regions based closely on where they are located. This is not always accurate for every team because of the extreme density of colleges east of the Mississippi river but it tries to accommodate all teams. Each region is given a host city and a regional name. This year's regions are South, West, East, and Midwest. The host cities for these regions are, respectively, Atlanta, San Francisco, Newark, and Indianapolis. The final three games of the region, which are the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 rounds, are played in the host city. The four teams who make it to the host city must first win a four-team bracket in a different location. There are eight secondary locations that are assigned by proximity to the top 16 teams in order. Group of 4 teams x 2 per location x 8 locations = 64 teams. Now that we have a basic understanding of how the bracket is set up and why teams play in different locations based on their regions, we can look at how impactful this is.
The eight locations for the first two rounds of this year’s tournament are (in alphabetical order) Cleveland, Denver, Lexington, Milwaukee, Providence, Raleigh, Seattle, and Wichita. Each host city will have teams play at any of these locations. In the current format, teams are seeded 1-68 and then 1-16 with six eleven seeds and sixteen seeds, and all other seeds having four teams. At each seed level, the highest ranked team is put in the region closest to them until each region is used. This can be changed if two teams from the same conference face each other too early in the tournament. If the season ended today the projected top eight teams would be (in order) Auburn, Duke, Houston, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Michigan State, and Iowa State (via Joe Lunardi 3/2). Because of the formatting rules and current regional cities, Auburn would be the only team in the top eight playing in the region closest to its campus. This is an unfair advantage that hurts the other teams especially because of the next issue. The issue being that instead of playing their opening games near that region, the location draw is different. For the location draw, the teams are already in their respective regions, but the highest ranked team is assigned the location closest to it until all eight locations are used twice. Again, if we just look at the top eight teams, Alabama and Florida will not play in the closest location to their campus and only Auburn plays in the closest location to their region city.
Where do the top eight teams travel? Auburn would go from Lexington to Atlanta. Duke would go from Raleigh to Newark. Houston would go from Wichita to Indianapolis. Tennessee would go from Lexington to San Francisco. Alabama would go from Raleigh to Indianapolis. Florida would go from Cleveland to Newark. Michigan State would go from Cleveland to Atlanta. And Iowa State would go from Milwaukee to San Francisco.
So how far is each location from every host city? By answering this question, one can break down the exact distances each team could possibly travel. Using Google Maps, I found the distance in miles from each host city to each location when looking at the fastest travel time, even though some routes are technically less miles. This is because we are looking from a fans perspective and how they would travel to watch their team play throughout the tournament. A fan would like to drive to their destination as quickly as possible, so I used that mindset when looking at the distance between cities.
Key: Red = 1st, Orange = 2nd, Yellow = 3rd, Light Green = 4th, Green = 5th, Light Blue = 6th, Blue = 7th, Purple = 8th.
Cleveland is third for Atlanta (A3), sixth for San Francisco (SF6), second for Newark (N2), and third for Indianapolis (I3). Denver is seventh for Atlanta (A7), second for San Francisco (SF2), seventh for Newark (N7), and seventh for Indianapolis (I7). Lexington is first for Atlanta (A1), fifth for San Francisco (SF5), fourth for Newark (N4), and first for Indianapolis (I1). Milwaukee is fourth for Atlanta (A4), fourth for San Francisco (SF4), fifth for Newark (N5), and second for Indianapolis (I2). Providence is sixth for Atlanta (A6), eighth for San Francisco (SF8), first for Newark (N1), and sixth for Indianapolis (I6). Raleigh is second for Atlanta (A2), seventh for San Francisco (SF7), third for Newark (N3), and fourth for Indianapolis (I4). Seattle is eighth for Atlanta (A8), first for San Francisco (SF1), eighth for Newark (N8), and eighth for Indianapolis (I8). Wichita is fifth for Atlanta (A5), third for San Francisco (SF3), sixth for Newark (N6), and fifth for Indianapolis (I5). Atlanta: 1) Lexington (385), 2) Raleigh (405), 3) Cleveland (710), 4) Milwaukee (814), 5) Wichita (959), 6) Providence (1044), 7) Denver (1404), and 8) Seattle (2637). San Francisco: 1) Seattle (808), 2) Denver (1254), 3) Wichita (1678), 4) Milwaukee (2173), 5) Lexington (2393), 6) Cleveland (2461), 7) Raleigh (2851), and 8) Providence (3093). Newark: 1) Providence (192), 2) Cleveland (452), 3) Raleigh (496), 4) Lexington (695), 5) Milwaukee (870), 6) Wichita (1373), 7) Denver (1768), and 8) Seattle (2842). Indianapolis: 1) Lexington (189), 2) Milwaukee (279), 3) Cleveland (316), 4) Raleigh (625), 5) Wichita (675), 6) Providence (913), 7) Denver (1085), and 8) Seattle (2250).
After looking at the data I ranked each location within the host city from 1-8. 1 being least miles to travel and 8 being most miles to travel. I then compared the rankings for each location to see which host city they could be assigned to keep the miles traveled as low as possible. San Francisco has a total mileage between all eight locations that makes up 41.68% of the total mileage between all locations and host cities. Atlanta makes up 20.85% of this total, while Newark makes up 21.67% and Indianapolis makes up 15.79%. The three host cities work well together as they all have pretty similar total mileage.
The teams who benefit the most from this format are Duke, Auburn, and Michigan State. Duke benefits because of their proximity to the Raleigh location. Auburn benefits because they got to choose both cities first. Michigan State benefits because they kind of get lucky based on the placement of the teams ahead of them. Teams who are hurt the worst by this format are Tennessee and Iowa State, simply because they must travel to San Francisco. But does traveling less lead to better outcomes for the top teams? Lets look at last year’s tournament.
In the 2024 NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament, the regional cities were Boston (East), Dallas (South), Detroit (Midwest), and Los Angeles (West). The opening locations were Brooklyn, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Memphis, Omaha, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, and Spokane. The top eight teams in the tournament were UConn, Houston, Purdue, North Carolina, Tennessee, Marquette, Arizona, and Iowa State. Their travel and tournament results showed a trend.
When we rank each team by the least miles traveled, we get the order of Purdue, UConn, Tennessee, Houston, Marquette, Arizona, Iowa State, and North Carolina. We see a similar order when looking at how far these teams advanced in the tournament. That order being UConn, Purdue, Tennessee, and then all five other teams were eliminated in the Sweet 16. So, what does this information tell us about miles traveled? Every top eight team who had to travel more than 1,000 miles from campus to the first location and then location to region city, lost their first game at that region city. The three teams who had less than 1,000 miles traveled all won their first location games and their first region game. Tennessee would go on to lose to Purdue, another top eight team, but with less mileage. UConn and Purdue would play in the championship game. There was clear evidence in last year’s tournament that traveling less throughout the tournament impacted the success of the top eight teams. If we assume that travel will play a pivotal role in this year’s tournament, then teams who are seeded high but forced to travel greater distances, might not fare well.
The only way to guarantee that your team is given the shortest possible path is to be the number one overall seed. It is also helpful to play on the east coast as a majority of regional and opening location cities are there. 23 of the last 26 national champions have been teams whose campus is east of the Mississippi river. The keys to success in March are traveling less and being on the east coast. Teams who fit these criteria in the current top eight are Auburn, Duke and just barely Michigan State. Based on these metrics it would be a no-brainer to pick a team who has a favorable travel path between cities once the bracket is released.