2009 NCAA Tournament Betting Preview

The NCAA Men's Basketball Championship is colloquially referred to as March Madness, and is one of those occasions in the USA when nearly everyone who follows sports will have a bet going, usually in the form of private pools to determine the outcome of the bracket. Basketball betting is technically illegal but Americans enjoy nothing more than these hypocritical grey areas and so millions take pleasure in wagering on the outcome of these college basketball games, collectively known as the Big Dance.
65 college basketball schools have qualified for the 2009 tournament, with 33 teams receiving at-large bids. Thirty-one of these schools got in by winning their respective conference tournaments.

We are highly confident that our March Madness Power Rankings provide you with 10 automatic bracket picks. The basketball handicapping experts feel that these ten schools are likely Sweet Sixteen candidates (although seeding clashes might of course prevent that from happening). The college basketball teams we have selected range from the usual suspects for Final Four berths such as Duke and North Carolina, to schools such as Clemson and Memphis that are proving to be very tough to beat ATS in 2008, and finally we've added some long shot dark horses like Utah who might end up being this year?s so-called Cinderella team.

The NCAA Tournament for 2009 will be the 70th Big Dance as the original tournament was first played in 1939, although back then it only consisted of eight teams, and it stayed that way until 1950. The term March Madness came into being in 1982, and as a reference to the tournament it may first have been uttered by Brent Musburger.
March Madness mainly refers to the sports gambling frenzy that used to center around the Las Vegas sportsbooks but is now accessible online. Online sportsbooks provide NCAA Tournament odds for every game and as the bracket breaks down to the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, and Final Four stages the betting levels increase substantially.

We'll feature free NCAA Tournament picks courtesy of the sports handicapping website mycapper.com, which will help everyone from the amateur looking for March Madness bracket picks to the high rollers who want to put down five dimes or more on each and every game! Sports betting can be extremely profitable and it is also an adrenaline rush second to none, especially when it comes to the ubiquitous thrill of 2009 NCAA Tournament bets.