As the phrase became more popular,
ESPN decided to capitalize on the phenomenon with the concept of ESPN BracketBusters. The
cable television network worked with a group of non-money conferences, including the
Colonial Athletic,
Horizon,
Mid-American,
Missouri Valley, and
Western Athletic, to stage a series of games where potential bracket-buster teams would play each other late in the regular season outside of conference play. The idea was to give these non-power conference schools more exposure to national audiences than they would otherwise get, and boost their chances of being selected for the NCAA Tournament. The first series began in 2003 (it was labeled Bracket Buster Saturday for the initial three offerings), where 18 teams played on one Saturday. The matchups for these games was left open as late as possible, in order to determine the most likely teams to benefit. The concept proved greatly successful, and the 2006 edition of ESPN BracketBusters—with corporate sponsorship by
eBay—featured 100 different teams playing over multiple days. So many teams were involved that fewer than half the games were actually televised on the ESPN family of networks. The 2007 and 2008 editions had
O'Reilly as the title sponsor. The 2012 edition had
Sears as the title sponsor. The 2013 edition had
Ramada Worldwide as the title sponsor. In 2006, two teams that were matched up in an ESPN BracketBusters game—
Wichita State and
George Mason—later faced each other in the NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen round. In December 2012 ESPN announced that they would discontinue the BracketBusters event following the February 2013 offering. ==References==