March 17, 1939 was the date of the first March Madness men’s college basketball tournament. Now, 78 years later, March Madness is one of the biggest sporting events nationwide, raking in an average of 11.3 annual viewers according to CNN.  

Linfield students gathered in the Fred Meyer Lounge last Friday to eat pizza and watch their favorite teams compete in the tournament. Everyone intently watched as Oklahoma State and Michigan battled it out until the final whistle and when University of Oregon laced up against New York Iona College.

According to US News, here are the top five fun facts about the tournament:

1. The UCLA Bruins have won the most March Madness championships with 11 national titles, and ten of them were under coach John Wooden.
2. The University of Connecticut is the only team in history that has won the championship twice in the same year in both the women’s and the men’s tournaments. The UCONN men’s team has won four championships, while the lady Huskies have won ten.
3. You have a one in nine quintillion chance of filling out a perfect bracket. You’re more likely to become president, get struck by lightning, and be killed by a shark than you are to correctly predict the outcome of the tournament.  
4. The record of the most points scored by an individual player in a March Madness game is held by Austin Carr, who scored 61 points for Notre Dame against Ohio in the first round of the tournament in 1970.
5. A huge loss in productivity results from the March Madness tournament. It is estimated that checking scores at work can cost companies as much as 4 billion dollars nationwide during the first week of the tournament, and about 1.3 billion dollars for every hour of the work day after that.

Students enjoyed tuning in to the March Madness tournament on Friday, and many more look forward to the final four games on April 2 in Houston, Texas.