University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private research university in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1880, it is the oldest private research university in California. For the 2018–19 academic year, there were 20,000 students enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs. USC has 27,500 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, engineering, social work, occupational therapy and medicine, it is the largest private employer in the city of Los Angeles, generates $8 billion in economic impact on Los Angeles and California. USC is the birthplace of the Domain Name System. Other technologies invented at USC include DNA computing, dynamic programming, image compression, VoIP, antivirus software. USC's alumni include a total of 11 Rhodes Scholars and 12 Marshall Scholars; as of October 2018, nine Nobel laureates, six MacArthur Fellows, one Turing Award winner have been affiliated with the university. USC sponsors a variety of intercollegiate sports and competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association as a member of the Pac-12 Conference.
Members of USC's sports teams, the Trojans, have won 104 NCAA team championships, ranking them third in the United States, 399 NCAA individual championships, ranking them second in the United States. Trojan athletes have won 288 medals at the Olympic Games, more than any other university in the United States. In 1969, it joined the Association of American Universities. USC has had a total of 521 football players drafted to the National Football League, the second-highest number of drafted players in the country; the University of Southern California was founded following the efforts of Judge Robert M. Widney, who helped secure donations from several key figures in early Los Angeles history: a Protestant nurseryman, Ozro Childs, an Irish Catholic former-Governor, John Gately Downey, a German Jewish banker, Isaias W. Hellman; the three donated 308 lots of land to establish the campus and provided the necessary seed money for the construction of the first buildings. Operated in affiliation with the Methodist Church, the school mandated from the start that "no student would be denied admission because of race."
The university is no longer affiliated with any church, having severed formal ties in 1952. When USC opened in 1880, tuition was $15.00 per term and students were not allowed to leave town without the knowledge and consent of the university president. The school had an enrollment of 53 students and a faculty of 10; the city lacked paved streets, electric lights, a reliable fire alarm system. Its first graduating class in 1884 was a class of three—two males and female valedictorian Minnie C. Miltimore; the colors of USC are cardinal and gold, which were approved by USC's third president, the Reverend George W. White, in 1896. In 1958, the shade of gold, more of an orange color, was changed to a more yellow shade; the letterman's awards were the first to make the change. USC students and athletes are known as Trojans, epitomized by the Trojan Shrine, nicknamed "Tommy Trojan", near the center of campus; until 1912, USC students were known as Fighting Methodists or Wesleyans, though neither name was approved by the university.
During a fateful track and field meet with Stanford University, the USC team was beaten early and conclusively. After only the first few events, it seemed implausible USC would win. After this contest, Los Angeles Times sportswriter Owen Bird reported the USC athletes "fought on like the Trojans of antiquity", the president of the university at the time, George F. Bovard, approved the name officially. During World War II, USC was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. USC is responsible for $8 billion in economic output in Los Angeles County. On May 1, 2014, USC was named as one of many higher education institutions under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights for potential Title IX violations by Barack Obama's White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. USC is under a concurrent Title IX investigation for potential anti-male bias in disciplinary proceedings, as well as denial of counseling resources to male students, as of 8 March 2016.
In 2017, the university came into the national spotlight when the Los Angeles Times published information about Carmen A. Puliafito, the dean of USC's medical school. After accusations of drug use, he resigned from his position as dean in 2016 and was fired from the school the following year after the news stories were published, his medical license was subsequently suspended pending a decision. The following year, the Los Angeles Times broke another story about USC focusing on George Tyndall, a gynecologist accused of abusing 52 patients at USC; the reports span from 1990 to 2016 and include using racist and sexual language, conducting exams without gloves and taking pictures of his patients' genitals. Inside Higher Ed noted that there have been "other incidents in which the university is perceived to have failed to act on misconduct by powerful officials" when it reported that the university's president, C. L. Max Nikias, is resigning. Tyndall was fired in 2017 after reaching a settlement with the university.
The school did not report him to state medical authorities or law enforcement at the time, though the LAPD is now investigatin
NBC Sunday Night Football
NBC Sunday Night Football is a weekly television broadcast of National Football League games on NBC in the United States. It began airing on August 6, 2006 with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, which opened that year's preseason. NBC took over the rights to the Sunday prime time game telecasts from ESPN, which carried the broadcasts from 1987 to 2005. NBC had aired American Football League, American Football Conference, games from 1960 until 1998, when CBS took over those rights. During the 2011–12 season, Sunday Night Football became the first live sports competition to hold the position as Nielsen's most-watched program on U. S. network television during the year, beating American Idol, which held that honor for eight consecutive seasons beginning in 2004. As of 2019, Al Michaels serves as the play-by-play announcer for the broadcasts, with Cris Collinsworth as the color commentator and Michele Tafoya as the sideline reporter. Upon NBC's assumption of the Sunday prime time game rights, Fred Gaudelli and Drew Esocoff, who serve as the respective lead producer and director, joined Sunday Night Football in the same positions they held during the latter portion of the ABC era of Monday Night Football.
John Madden, the color commentator for the first three years of the program, retired prior to the 2009 season. Since 2014, sister cable channel NBC Universo has carried Spanish-language simulcasts of select games, after years of aborted attempts to simulcast the games on Telemundo. With the former mun2's relaunch on February 1, 2015, NBC Universo simulcast Super Bowl XLIX with NBC, with the channel expected to carry Spanish-language simulcasts of NFL games and NBC Sports properties. NBC's broadcast begins at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time with its pre-game show; the show serves the same purpose as NFL Primetime did for ESPN, offering recaps of the early action as well as a preview of the game to come. The show emanates from the NBC Sports studios in Connecticut as well as at the game site. Mike Tirico, Tony Dungy, Rodney Harrison, Peter King and Mike Florio broadcast from the studio while Liam McHugh reports from the game. Michaels and Tafoya will appear. NBC's current NFL contract includes the rights to the season-opening Thursday night NFL Kickoff Game, the game played on Thanksgiving Night, two playoff games, one in the Wild Card round and one in the Divisional Playoffs.
Under the initial 6-year deal, the network was awarded the rights to two Super Bowl games, following the 2008 and 2011 seasons, the Pro Bowl games in the years which NBC was slated to air the Super Bowl and 2 More Pro Bowls in 2013 and 2014. Beginning in 2012, through an extension to the contract that runs through 2022, NBC gained the rights to air a primetime Thanksgiving game, one divisional playoff game in lieu of a Wild Card game in the postseason, the rights to Super Bowls held or to be held in 2015 for, 2018 for and 2022. However, the Pro Bowl is not included in the new contract as ESPN was set to gain exclusive rights to the game in 2015, with NBC's broadcast of the 2014 Pro Bowl being the final time the game would air on broadcast television prior to ABC's simulcast with ESPN on the 2018 edition. NBC is the current home of the annual Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, which begins the NFL's preseason each August. However, the 2007 game aired on the NFL Network as the league had planned to stage the China Bowl just a few days to be televised by NBC as a tie-in to its coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
There are two other preseason telecasts on NBC. Two preseason games, the Thursday night season opener were retained as part of the new contract beginning in 2014. From 2006 until 2013, NBC's contract included the rights to both Saturday wild card playoff games, aired by ABC as part of its Monday Night Football contract. Tom Hammond provided play-by-play for the early game until 2012, with Dan Hicks taking the position in 2013. Cris Collinsworth was the initial color commentator for these broadcasts, doing so until 2008 when he replaced John Madden as lead analyst in 2009. Mike Mayock, NBC's Notre Dame color commentator until 2012, John Madden taking as color commentator in 2013; the first regular season game to be shown by NBC under this contract, between the Miami Dolphins and the Pittsburgh Steelers, aired on September 7, 2006, followed by the first Sunday-night game – between the Indianapolis Colts and New York Giants – on September 10, 2006. The actual first game of the run – the 2006 Pro Football Hall of Fame Game between the Oakland Raiders and Philadelphia Eagles – was televised on August 6, 2006.
NBC Sunday Night Football is the b
WCCO (AM)
WCCO is a commercial AM radio station in Minneapolis and owned by Entercom. Its offices and studios are located in the Entercom Building at 625 Second Avenue South in downtown Minneapolis. WCCO features talk radio and sports programming, with local hosts heard most hours of the day and evening. World and national news are supplied by CBS News Radio. Overnight, WCCO carries the syndicated CBS Sports Radio network. WCCO is a Class A clear-channel station. With 50,000 watts of power, a nondirectional signal, WCCO reaches a wide area of North America at night; the transmitter is located off Coon Rapids Boulevard at Lily Street NW in Coon Rapids. WCCO first signed on the air on September 4, 1922 as WLAG, known as "the Call of the North"; the studios were in the Nicollet Hotel near Loring Park in Minneapolis. The station soon had financial trouble and closed in 1924. Washburn Crosby Company, forerunner of General Mills, took over the station and switched the call sign to WCCO for the company's initials.
Broadcasts resumed less than 2 months on October 2, 1924, from its current transmitter site in Coon Rapids, with studios still in the Nicollet Hotel. In 1927, WCCO was one of the original 21 stations of the NBC Red Network, it carried NBC's slate of dramas, news, soap operas, game shows, big-band broadcasts during the "Golden Age of Radio". CBS bought WCCO from General Mills in 1932, switched its network affiliation to the CBS Radio network, it remains a CBS affiliate. In 1952, CBS sold majority control of WCCO to the Murphy and McNally families, who formed Midwest Radio and Television as a holding company for WCCO radio and its new co-owned television station, Channel 4 WCCO-TV. CBS was forced to sell off its stake in the WCCO stations in 1954 due to Federal Communications Commission ownership limits in effect at the time. CBS reacquired the WCCO stations outright in 1992 when Midwest Radio and Television merged with the network. In the 1950s, as network programming was shifting from radio to television, WCCO switched to a full-service middle-of-the-road format, including popular music, news and talk.
Robert Ridder became president of WCCO in 1952. In the 1980s, the playlist shifted from middle-of-the-road music toward adult contemporary; the music was phased out by the early 1990s, when the format was changed to news and sports. From 1947 to 1996, WCCO and WCCO-TV won 12 George Foster Peabody Awards, more than any other Twin Cities broadcast outlet. In the early days of radio, WCCO was a powerful force in the development of better and more powerful transmitters. On November 11, 1928, with the implementation of the Federal Radio Commission's General Order 40, WCCO changed its frequency to 810 kHz and was granted clear-channel status, it began broadcasting with 50,000 watts for the first time in September 1932. In the 1930s, two additional 300-foot towers were added to increase the range of the station's signal. WCCO constructed a new 654-foot tower in Coon Rapids in 1939; this is the same tower used today, although the broadcast frequency was changed to 830 kHz as a result of the 1941 North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement-.
Due to the station's power, as well as Minnesota's landscape, WCCO boasts one of the largest coverage areas in the country. During the day, it provides at least B-grade coverage to all of Minnesota, plus large portions of Iowa and Wisconsin. Under the right conditions, it reaches into portions of South Dakota. At night, the station's signal reaches across 28 U. S. states and three Canadian provinces. Certain conditions can make the signal reach much farther. Legendary station personality Howard Viken says that he once picked up the station while he was in the military during World War II, stationed at Guadalcanal in 1943. WCCO has a longtime reputation of being the station to tune in for emergency information severe weather and school closings in winter. Listeners would call in during severe weather events and describe what they were seeing at their locations, supplementing information from the National Weather Service. For many years, WCCO was famous for its "klaxon" alert tone for tornado warnings.
WCCO is a PEP station for the Emergency Alert System. For a series of live public-service emergency broadcasts in 1965 – the St. Patrick's Day blizzard, the record April floods on the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, the May 6 onslaught of 24 tornado touchdowns in the Twin Cities area – the station earned the George Foster Peabody, DuPont, Sigma Delta Chi awards. WCCO engineers were experimenting with frequency modulation by 1939, operating W9XHW at 42.3 MHz, but at just 50 watts. With only a handful of Minneapolis residents owning an FM radio, WCCO did not rush into FM broadcasting; as late as 1969, WCCO-FM was broadcasting at 2,700 watts atop the 450-foot Foshay Tower in downtown Minneapolis, only for the minimum number of hours required to keep its FCC license. Meanwhile, several local FM stations had boosted their power to 100,000 watts and were airing new formats on FM, such as beautiful music and progressive rock. In 1973, WCCO-FM station moved its antenna to 1,250 feet near the top of the Shoreview, Twin Cities antenna farm, with a power of 100,000 watts.
A full day's programming of music and a large news operation could be heard for 150 miles in all directions. By the late 1970s, WCCO-FM 103 had come into its own and established an identity separate from AM 830, with a popular adult contemporary/soft rock sound. In 1983, it became WLTE 102.9 Lite-FM, an identity it kept until Christmas 2011, when it switched to a country music format as BUZ'N @ 102.9 with the new call letters KMNB. WCCO was t
Skiing
Skiing can be a means of transport, a recreational activity or a competitive winter sport in which the participant uses skis to glide on snow. Many types of competitive skiing events are recognized by the International Olympic Committee, the International Ski Federation. Skiing has a history of five millennia. Although modern skiing has evolved from beginnings in Scandinavia, it may have been practiced more than 100 centuries ago in what is now China, according to an interpretation of ancient paintings; the word "ski" is one of a handful of words. It comes from the Old Norse word "skíð" which means "split piece of wood or firewood". Asymmetrical skis were used in northern Sweden until at least the late 19th century. On one foot, the skier wore a long straight non-arching ski for sliding, a shorter ski was worn on the other foot for kicking; the underside of the short ski was either plain or covered with animal skin to aid this use, while the long ski supporting the weight of the skier was treated with animal fat in a similar manner to modern ski waxing.
Early skiers used spear. The first depiction of a skier with two ski poles dates to 1741. Skiing was used for transport until the mid-19th century, but since has become a recreation and sport. Military ski races were held in Norway during the 18th century, ski warfare was studied in the late 18th century; as equipment evolved and ski lifts were developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two main genres of skiing emerged—Alpine skiing and Nordic skiing. The main difference between the two is the type of ski binding. Called "downhill skiing", Alpine skiing takes place on a piste at a ski resort, it is characterized by fixed-heel bindings that attach at both the toe and the heel of the skier's boot. Ski lifts, including chairlifts, bring skiers up the slope. Backcountry skiing can be accessed by helicopter, snowcat and snowmobile. Facilities at resorts can include night skiing, après-ski, glade skiing under the supervision of the ski patrol and the ski school. Alpine skiing branched off from the older Nordic type of skiing around the 1920s when the advent of ski lifts meant that it was not necessary to walk any longer.
Alpine equipment has specialized to the point. The Nordic disciplines include cross-country skiing and ski jumping, which both use bindings that attach at the toes of the skier's boots but not at the heels. Cross-country skiing may be practiced in undeveloped backcountry areas. Ski jumping is practiced in certain areas that are reserved for ski jumping. Telemark skiing is a ski turning technique and FIS-sanctioned discipline, named after the Telemark region of Norway, it uses equipment similar to Nordic skiing, where the ski bindings are attached only at the toes of the ski boots, allowing the skier's heel to be raised throughout the turn. The following disciplines are sanctioned by the FIS. Many are included in the Winter Olympic Games. Cross-country – Encompasses a variety of formats for cross-country skiing races over courses of varying lengths. Races occur on homologated, groomed courses designed to support classic and free-style events, where skate skiing may be employed; the main competitions are the FIS Cross-Country World Cup and the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, various cross-country skiing events have been incorporated into the Winter Olympics since its inception in 1924.
The discipline incorporates: cross-country ski marathon events, sanctioned by the Worldloppet Ski Federation. Paralympic cross-country skiing and paralympic biathlon are both included in the Winter Paralympic Games. Ski jumping – Contested at the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup, the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, the FIS Ski Jumping Grand Prix, the FIS Ski Flying World Championships. Ski jumping has been a regular Olympic discipline at every Winter Games since 1924. Freeriding skiing – This category of skiing includes any practice of the sport on non-groomed terrain. Nordic combined – A combination of cross-country skiing and ski jumping, this discipline is contested at the FIS Nordic Combined World Cup, the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, at the Winter Olympics. Alpine skiing – Includes downhill, giant slalom, super giant slalom, para-alpine events. There are combined events where the competitors must complete one run of each event, for example, the Super Combined event consists of one run of super-G and one run of slalom skiing.
The dual slalom event, where racers ski head-to-head, was invented in 1941 and has been a competitive event since 1960. Alpine skiing is contested at the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, the Winter Olympics. Para-alpine skiing is contested at the World Para Alpine Skiing Championships and the Winter Paralympics. Speed skiing – Dating from 1898, with official records beginning in 1932 with an 89-mile-per-hour run by Leo Gasperi, this became an FIS discipline in the 1960s, it is contested at the FIS Speed Ski World Cup, was demonstrated at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville. Freestyle skiing – Includes mogul skiing, ski cross, half-pipe, slopestyle; the main freestyle competitions are the FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup and t
National Collegiate Athletic Association
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a non-profit organization which regulates athletes of 1,268 North American institutions and conferences. It organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, helps more than 480,000 college student-athletes who compete annually in college sports; the organization is headquartered in Indiana. In its 2016–17 fiscal year the NCAA took in $1.06 billion in revenue, over 82% of, generated by the Division I Men's Basketball Tournament. In August 1973, the current three-division system of Division I, Division II, Division III was adopted by the NCAA membership in a special convention. Under NCAA rules, Division I and Division II schools can offer scholarships to athletes for playing a sport. Division III schools may not offer any athletic scholarships. Larger schools compete in Division I and smaller schools in II and III. Division I football was further divided into I-A and I-AA in 1978. Subsequently, the term "Division I-AAA" was added to delineate Division I schools which do not field a football program at all, but that term is no longer used by the NCAA.
In 2006, Divisions I-A and I-AA were renamed the Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision. Controversially, the NCAA caps the benefits that collegiate athletes can receive from their schools. There is a consensus among economists that these caps for men's basketball and football players benefit the athletes' schools at the expense of athletes. Intercollegiate sports began in the US in 1852 when crews from Harvard and Yale universities met in a challenge race in the sport of rowing; as rowing remained the preeminent sport in the country into the late-1800s, many of the initial debates about collegiate athletic eligibility and purpose were settled through organizations like the Rowing Association of American Colleges and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association. As other sports emerged, notably football and basketball, many of these same concepts and standards were adopted. Football, in particular, began to emerge as a marquee sport, but the rules of the game itself were in constant flux and had to be adapted for each contest.
The NCAA dates its formation to two White House conferences convened by President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 20th century in response to repeated injuries and deaths in college football which had "prompted many college and universities to discontinue the sport." Following those White House meetings and the reforms which had resulted, Chancellor Henry MacCracken of New York University organized a meeting of 13 colleges and universities to initiate changes in football playing rules. The IAAUS was established on March 31, 1906, took its present name, the NCAA, in 1910. For several years, the NCAA was a discussion group and rules-making body, but in 1921, the first NCAA national championship was conducted: the National Collegiate Track and Field Championships. More rules committees were formed and more championships were created, including a basketball championship in 1939. A series of crises brought the NCAA to a crossroads after World War II; the "Sanity Code" – adopted to establish guidelines for recruiting and financial aid – failed to curb abuses.
Postseason football games were multiplying with little control, member schools were concerned about how the new medium of television would affect football attendance. The complexity of those problems and the growth in membership and championships demonstrated the need for full-time professional leadership. Walter Byers a part-time executive assistant, was named executive director in 1951, a national headquarters was established in Kansas City, Missouri in 1952. Byers wasted no time placing his stamp on the Association. A program to control live television of football games was approved, the annual Convention delegated enforcement powers to the Association's Council, legislation was adopted governing postseason bowl games; as college athletics grew, the scope of the nation's athletics programs diverged, forcing the NCAA to create a structure that recognized varying levels of emphasis. In 1973, the Association's membership was divided into three legislative and competitive divisions – I, II, III.
Five years in 1978, Division I members voted to create subdivisions I-A and I-AA in football. Until the 1980s, the association did not offer women's athletics. Instead, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, with nearly 1000 member schools, governed women's collegiate sports in the United States; the AIAW was in a vulnerable position. Following a one-year overlap in which both organizations staged women's championships, the AIAW discontinued operation, most member schools continued their women's athletics programs under the governance of the NCAA. By 1982 all divisions of the NCAA offered national championship events for women's athletics. A year in 1983, the 75th Convention approved an expansion to plan women's athletic program services and pushed for a women's championship program. By the 1980s, televised college football had become a larger source of income for the NCAA. In September 1981, the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia Athletic Association filed suit against the NCAA in district court in Oklahoma.
The plaintiffs stated that the NCAA's football tel
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan simply referred to as Michigan, is a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The university is Michigan's oldest; the school was moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 onto 40 acres of. Since its establishment in Ann Arbor, the university campus has expanded to include more than 584 major buildings with a combined area of more than 34 million gross square feet spread out over a Central Campus and North Campus, two regional campuses in Flint and Dearborn, a Center in Detroit; the university is a founding member of the Association of American Universities. Considered one of the foremost research universities in the United States with annual research expenditures approaching $1.5 billion, Michigan is classified as one of 115 Doctoral Universities with Very High Research by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. As of October 2018, 50 MacArthur Fellows, 25 Nobel Prize winners, 6 Turing Award winners and 1 Fields Medalist have been affiliated with University of Michigan.
Its comprehensive graduate program offers doctoral degrees in the humanities, social sciences, STEM fields as well as professional degrees in architecture, medicine, pharmacy, social work, public health, dentistry. Michigan's body of living alumni comprises more than 540,000 people, one of the largest alumni bases of any university in the world. Michigan's athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are collectively known as the Wolverines, they are members of the Big Ten Conference. More than 250 Michigan athletes or coaches have participated in Olympic events, winning more than 150 medals; the University of Michigan was established in Detroit on August 26, 1817 as the Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, by the governor and judges of Michigan Territory. Judge Augustus B. Woodward invited The Rev. John Monteith and Father Gabriel Richard, a Catholic priest, to establish the institution. Monteith became its first president and held seven of the professorships, Richard was vice president and held the other six professorships.
Concurrently, Ann Arbor had set aside 40 acres in the hopes of being selected as the state capital. But when Lansing was chosen as the state capital, the city offered the land for a university. What would become the university moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 thanks to Governor Stevens T. Mason; the original 40 acres was the basis of the present Central Campus. This land was once inhabited by the Ojibwe and Bodewadimi Native tribes and was obtained through the Treaty of Fort Meigs. In 1821, the university was renamed the University of Michigan; the first classes in Ann Arbor were held in 1841, with six freshmen and a sophomore, taught by two professors. Eleven students graduated in the first commencement in 1845. By 1866, enrollment had increased to 1,205 students. Women were first admitted in 1870, although Alice Robinson Boise Wood had become the first woman to attend classes in 1866-7. James Burrill Angell, who served as the university's president from 1871 to 1909, aggressively expanded U-M's curriculum to include professional studies in dentistry, engineering and medicine.
U-M became the first American university to use the seminar method of study. Among the early students in the School of Medicine was Jose Celso Barbosa, who in 1880 graduated as valedictorian and the first Puerto Rican to get a university degree in the United States, he returned to Puerto Rico to practice medicine and served in high-ranking posts in the government. From 1900 to 1920, the university constructed many new facilities, including buildings for the dental and pharmacy programs, natural sciences, Hill Auditorium, large hospital and library complexes, two residence halls. In 1920 the university reorganized the College of Engineering and formed an advisory committee of 100 industrialists to guide academic research initiatives; the university became a favored choice for bright Jewish students from New York in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Ivy League schools had quotas restricting the number of Jews to be admitted. Because of its high standards, U-M gained the nickname "Harvard of the West."
During World War II, U-M's research supported military efforts, such as U. S. Navy projects in proximity fuzes, PT boats, radar jamming. After the war, enrollment expanded and by 1950, it reached 21,000, of which more than one third were veterans supported by the G. I. Bill; as the Cold War and the Space Race took hold, U-M received numerous government grants for strategic research and helped to develop peacetime uses for nuclear energy. Much of that work, as well as research into alternative energy sources, is pursued via the Memorial Phoenix Project. In the 1960 Presidential campaign, U. S. Senator John F. Kennedy jokingly referred to himself as "a graduate of the Michigan of the East, Harvard University" in his speech proposing the formation of the Peace Corps speaking to a crowd from the front steps of the Michigan Union. Lyndon B. Johnson gave his speech outlining his Great Society program as the lead speaker during U-M's 1964 spring commencement ceremony. During the 1960s, the university campus was the site of numerous protests against the Vietnam War and university administration.
On March 24, 1965, a group of U-M faculty members and 3,000 students held the nation's first faculty-led "teach-in" to protest against American policy in
NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament
The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament known and branded as NCAA March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States featuring 68 college basketball teams from the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, to determine the national championship. The tournament was created in 1939 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, was the idea of Ohio State coach Harold Olsen. Played during March, it has become one of the most famous annual sporting events in the United States; the tournament teams include champions from 32 Division I conferences, 36 teams which are awarded at-large berths. These "at-large" teams are chosen by an NCAA selection committee announced in a nationally televised event on the Sunday preceding the "First Four" play-in games held in Dayton and dubbed Selection Sunday; the 68 teams are divided into four regions and organized into a single-elimination "bracket", which pre-determines, when a team wins a game, which team it will face next.
Each team is "seeded", or ranked, within its region from 1 to 16. After the First Four, the tournament occurs during the course of three weekends, at pre-selected neutral sites across the United States. Teams, seeded by rank, proceed through a single-game elimination bracket beginning with a "first four" consisting of 8 low-seeded teams playing in 4 games for a position in the first round the Tuesday and Wednesday before the first round begins, a first round consisting of 64 teams playing in 32 games over the course of a week, the "Sweet Sixteen" and "Elite Eight" rounds the next week and weekend and – for the last weekend of the tournament – the "Final Four" round; the Final Four is played during the first weekend of April. These four teams, one from each region, compete in a preselected location for the national championship; the tournament has been at least televised since 1969. The games are broadcast by CBS, TBS, TNT, truTV under the trade-name NCAA March Madness. Since 2011, all games are available for viewing nationwide and internationally.
As television coverage has grown, so too has the tournament's popularity. Millions of Americans fill out a bracket, attempting to predict the outcome of 63 games of the tournament. With 11 national titles, UCLA has the record for the most NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championships; the University of Kentucky is second, with eight national titles. The University of North Carolina is third, with six national titles, Duke University and Indiana University are tied for fourth with five national titles; the University of Connecticut is sixth with four national titles. The University of Kansas & Villanova are tied for 7th with three national titles. Since 1985, when the tournament expanded to 64 teams, Duke has won five championships; the NCAA has changed the tournament format several times since its inception, most being an increase of the number of teams. This section describes the tournament as it has operated since 2011. A total of 68 teams qualify for the tournament played during April. Thirty-two teams earn automatic bids as their respective conference champions.
Of the 32 Division I "all-sports" conferences, all 32 hold championship tournaments to determine which team receives the automatic qualification. The Ivy League was the last Division I conference. If two or more Ivies shared a regular-season championship, a one-game playoff was used to decide the tournament participant. Since 2017, the league conducts their own postseason tournament; the remaining 36 tournament slots are granted to at-large bids, which are determined by the Selection Committee in a nationally televised event on the Sunday preceding the First Four play-in tournament and dubbed Selection Sunday by the media and fans, by a group of conference commissioners and school athletic directors who are appointed into service by the NCAA. The committee determines where all sixty-eight teams are seeded and placed in the bracket; the tournament is divided into four regions and each region has at least sixteen teams, but four additional teams are added per the decision of the Selection Committee.
The committee is charged with making each of the four regions as close as possible in overall quality of teams from wherever they come from. The names of the regions vary from year to year, are broadly geographic. From 1957 to 1984, the "Mideast" corresponding to the Southeastern region of the United States, designation was used. From 1985 to 1997, the Mideast region was known as "Southeast" and again changed to "South" starting from 1998; the selected names correspond to the location of the four cities hosting the regional finals. From 2004 to 2006, the regions were named after their host cities, e.g. the Phoenix Regional in 2004, the Chicago Regional in 2005, the Minneapolis Regional in 2006, but reverted to the traditional geographic designations beginning in 2007. For example, during 2012, the regions were named South, Midwest (St. Louis, Mis
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