March Madness thingnaming: Core 64, True 32?

This year’s men’s college basketball tournament featured four play-in games called the First Four that the NCAA officially designated as the “first round”. They renamed what used to be called the first round — the truly mad round where 64 teams play 32 games in 2 days — the “second round”. But tradition is hard to break. Many people ignored the official names and kept right on calling the 64-team stage the “first round”. Naming confusion ensued.

For Predictalot, we sidestepped the problem by calling the first two major rounds the “round of 64” and the “round of 32”. Interestingly enough, Yahoo! Sports independently adopted the same convention.

But shouldn’t we come up with some cute, memorable names to go along with Sweet 16, Elite 8, and Final 4? Wearing my hat as amateur (in every sense) thingnamer, here are my official nominations:

  • Core 64
  • True 32

(I initially considered but dropped a more accurate, yet ultimately clunky-sounded alternate: “Thru 32”.)

(Dis)Like them? Other ideas?

3 thoughts on “March Madness thingnaming: Core 64, True 32?”

  1. It should be s* sixty four , eg starting sixty four

    Elite eight
    Final four
    Sweet sixteen

  2. If you look at their wikipedia pages, older tournaments have a “Teams” section that lists where each team lost. The last tournament with this info appears to be in 2003:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_NCAA_Men%27s_Division_I_Basketball_Tournament#Teams

    Here, “Round of 64” and “Round of 32” are used, but then “Sweet Sixteen”, etc.

    In these brackets (when the tournament had 65 teams) the losing team in the play-in game is listed as losing in the “Preliminary Round”.

    This sounds right to me: “Preliminary Round” for the first four, then “Round of 64” and “Round of 32”, and then the “Sweet Sixteen”, etc.

  3. You’re right Mingyu, thanks. Still, even though it technically breaks the pattern, I like Core 64.

    Thanks Abe. I hadn’t realized “round of 64/32” were used as early as 2003. Still, they don’t seem in terribly common use, for example ESPN doesn’t use them.

    I agree they are perfectly good/serviceable names. Just not very catchy.

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