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the toP 5 toUrnaMentS In the WorLD
In honor of the Olympics in Sochi, Russia - the upcoming NCAA March Madness tournament and sporting events everywhere, I present the top five sports tournaments in the world.
CHRISTIaN FOLSOM Delta Tau Delta
Christian is a sophomore studying broadcasting. You may contact him at christianfolsom@gmail.com.
Tournaments just aren’t tournaments without brackets to organize the competitors and make everything fair. When you think of a bracket or of the term ‘bracketology’ you most likely think of the NCAA March Madness college basketball tournament that takes place every March. According to the Wall Street Journal “college basketball’s National Invitation and NCAA basketball tournaments began in 1938 and 1939, respectively, and soon after, brackets began to appear in some newspapers. According to the NCAA, “The first complete bracket in its basketball archives is from 1943.” #5: World Baseball Classic The World Baseball Classic is an international baseball tournament sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation and created by Major League Baseball, the Major League Baseball Players Association, and other professional baseball leagues and their players associations around the world. It is the main tournament sanctioned by the IBAF, which names its winner the “World Champion.” It previously coexisted with Olympic Baseball and the Baseball World Cup, but the other two have been discontinued in favor of the World Baseball Classic. The most recent winner in 2013 was the Dominican Republic. #4 Masters
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The Masters tournament is one of the four major championships in professional golf. It takes place the first full week of April and it is the first of the majors to be played each year. Unlike the other major championships, the Masters is held each year at the same location, Augusta National Golf Club, a private golf club in the city of Augusta, Georgia. The winner of the Masters Golf tournament is awarded the coveted green jacket and has their name forever enshrined at Augusta National. #3 Wimbledon The Wimbledon Championships is the oldest tennis tournament in the world.. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London, since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the others being the Australian Open, the French Open and the US Open. Since the Australian Open shifted to hard court in 1988, Wimbledon is the only Major still played on grass, the game’s original surface. #2 NCAA March Madness Tournament
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is the premier sports tournament in the United States every year. Drawing millions and millions of viewers on both television, this 64-team bracket gave birth to the term ‘bracketology’. Known for upsets and amazing finishes, there is good reason to call it March ‘Madness’. Since its creation, there has never been a perfectly filled out bracket. This year, billionaire Warren Buffet offered a billion dollars to anyone that can fill out a perfect bracket guessing every single game result perfectly. #1 FIFA World Cup The championship has been awarded every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930. The current champions are Spain, who won the 2010 tournament in South Africa. The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation over a period of about a month; this is called the World Cup Finals. The World Cup is among the world’s most widely viewed sporting events. An estimated 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 FIFA World Cup held in Germany. The next World Cup will be hosted by Brazil in 2014.