Hold up. Do I love the First Four? What? Why?

At First, I was not For the First Four. But over a decade, I have come to love this weird lump hanging off the side of the bracket.

The first buzzer-beater of the NCAA Tournament happened last night. It was in the 16-vs.-16 game between Alabama State and Saint Francis, for the right to play 1-seed Auburn on Thursday. And of course, it was in Dayton, Ohio, the play-in capital of America.

Here’s a summary of the final 20 seconds:

• ASU’s Amarr Knox misses a layup. Another ASU player taps the rebound up in the air, it’s deflected a couple of times, and it bobbles out beyond the 3-point arc. In the chase for the rebound, Saint Francis’ Daemar Kelly undercuts ASU’s T.J. Matlock with a foul that initially appears to tear all of Matlock’s knee ligaments.

• Matlock steps to the line with the chance to give his team a lead with 12 seconds remaining… and misses the front end of the 1-and-1.

• St. Francis takes the rebound and tries to take it down the court with no timeouts for a game-winning score—just like they did in the NEC title game against CCSU. But Alabama State strips the ball around halfcourt. Then St. Francis strips it back.

• The ball ends up in the hands of Juan Cranford Jr., who appears to have an open lane for a layup. But Alabama State once again gets their hands on the ball and knocks it off Cranford’s legs and out of bounds. Alabama State now has the ball, but they’re 90 feet from the rim.

• ASU runs a Hail Mary-style play, and the ball gets deflected into the air around the free throw line.

• Hail Mary passes are almost never caught by the intended receiver. They’re much more likely to pop around in the air off a few bodies and fall to a player running around was vaguely on the perimeter of the scrum, hoping for the ball to get deflected and fall directly into their hands. As ball-knowers, Alabama State kept that in mind, and the ball fell to Knox.

• You may remember Knox as the player who missed a layup 12 seconds ago. Not this time.Game, Hornets.

This was exactly what you’d expect the biggest game of the season for the two worst teams in the NCAA Tournament to look like. (Not a zing. Objective fact. Kenpom ratings #275 and #310 out of 364 teams.) They may not be particularly skilled, but they had the heart to make it this far, and they weren’t going to go home without flinging their bodies and hands and basketballs around the court with as much effort as possible. It led to something magical—one of those shining moments Luther Vandross sings about, and surely the last one for Alabama State this season before they play Auburn tomorrow.

When the NCAA Tournament added the First Four, I was baffled. The tournament had already featured a play-in game—of course, also played in Dayton, Ohio. They added three additional play-in games, one more between 16-seeds and two between the final four at-large teams in the tournament, filling up the two nights before the Thursday start of the Round of 64. I kept wondering: Who was this bizarre opening round for?

Who felt the NCAA Tournament was too small at 65 teams, but just right at 68? Who would actually consider these games part of the NCAA Tournament? (Even the NCAA waffled on this, unsure for a while whether to call these games the “first round” or something else.) How could anybody justify the ridiculous logistics of selecting the tournament field on Sunday, flying teams to Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday, then flying them to a separate site to play again Thursday? And hold on, why were the games permanently played in Dayton, Ohio? Why make players and teams who fought hard to reach the NCAA Tournament feel as if they still hadn’t done enough? Oh, and how come the “Four” in Final Four refers to the number of teams in playing in the Final Four (same as the Sweet 16, same as the Elite Eight) but the “Four” in First Four refers to the number of games in the First Four? WHO IS THIS (First) FOR?

The whole thing seemed like a money grab… but also, so unappealing and insignificant that I couldn’t imagine it actually grabbing that much money. You’re telling me that the viewership numbers from four games on a channel called “truTV” in games which people can’t even pick as a part of their bracket pool are big enough to justify all this?

A decade later, I’ve done a complete 180. (Well, not about the whole “Final Four means Four teams, First Four means Four Games” thing. As a pedant, that really bothers me.) This scares me. I like to think I have firm stances on things. If I don’t like a song, I don’t like it! You can’t trick me into liking it by playing it for me 100,000 times! (Unless I heard it while hanging out with people I liked, or my wife likes it, or it reminds me of a specific time in my life…)

I knew the First Four was stupid and pointless the moment I saw it. How did I become a First Four Fan?

It’s apparently great prep for the Round of 64?????

Other than my video, which YOU SHOULD WATCH, I have one other bracket-filling tip: Pick one of the teams from the First Four. Most people don’t, because it shows up as “XAV/TEX” in their bracket app of choice until after the games in Dayton are played, and it feels weird to pick “XAV/TEX” to win a basketball game, since that’s not a team.

But First Four teams significantly outperform their counterparts who just go straight into the 64-team bracket.

Some wild stats:

• In the 13 years of the First Four, 12 have included a main round victory by a First Four team. (The only year nobody got to the Round of 32 was 2019.)

• 46 percent of the 10/11/12/13/14 seeds out of the First Four have won main round games. That’s better than the all-time record of 10-seeds in the first round (38.7 percent) even though many of these teams are worse than 10 seeds.

• One of the two 16-seeds to beat a 1-seed came out of the First Four (2023 Fairleigh Dickinson), even though First Four teams represent about 16 percent of all 16-seeds.

• Two First Four teams (2011 VCU, 2021 UCLA) have gone on to make the Final Four as 11-seeds, tied for the lowest-seeded teams ever to make the Final Four.

Why does this happen? I’ve done some research and I’m prepared to offer a series of explanatio—JK, I have no idea. None of it makes sense. There is no possible way there is a competitive advantage to flying to Dayton, Ohio, and then flying to a second city to play a team that was just sitting back and watching you play. But it keeps happening!

This makes the First Four an integral part of the tournament to me. What once seemed like an extra hurdle for the worst teams in the field now seems like the forge of champions. (First Four-ge?)

It lets the little guys win some money

The NCAA takes the money it gets from TV networks to broadcast the NCAA Tournament and pays out shares to the conferences whose teams win games. You play in a tournament game, your conference gets a unit, which is worth around $2 million.

And the First Four games count as a unit. So if you win in the First Four and lose in the Round of 64, you get two units, while a team which goes straight to the Round of 64 and loses gets just one. This can be a huge boon to smaller leagues like the SWAC, an underfunded conference of HBCUs which contains three of the bottom 10 athletic budgets in Division I, will get an extra $2 million because Alabama State won last night. Because SWAC teams are generally some of the lowest ranked teams in the field, they’re always in the First Four, and have won won five First Four games as opposed to just one Round of 64 game.

Now, maybe you’re saying: The NCAA makes plenty of money. Why not just give that money to smaller conferences to make the sport more competitive instead of forcing those schools to win games to get paid?

In response, I’ve gotta say: Hey, maybe you’ve got a point there. Moving on.

I love that Dayton loves this

A few times on social media, I have jokingly suggested that it would be really funny if people in Dayton are huge First Four fans.

And every time, the replies are the same: Daytonians out in full force, telling me that they are, in fact, huge First Four fans.

It warms my heart that there’s a place that is extremely passionate about quasi-important games featuring teams they have no allegiance to. I’ve been to plenty of NCAA Tournament games, and the crowd can be pretty lifeless at neutral sites. People rooting for the best teams might skip until the later rounds; people rooting for the lower seeds may not want to shell out hundreds of dollars in travel expenses to see their teams lose in Round 1; locals may not take off work on Thursday afternoon to watch two teams they don’t care about.

But Dayton has decided this is Their Thing. Dayton’s actual basketball team is playing tonight in the NIT, and some of their fans are going to the arena to watch American vs. Mount St. Mary’s tonight. Every year, they send the worst teams in the bracket to a place they’ve never been to, where nobody cares about them, and that place welcomes them with open arms and full stands. They have decided they’re happy to be a big stage for two small teams they’ve never heard of.

An actual extra round of the NCAA Tournament would clearly be slop intended to squeeze as much money out of this event as possible. But this was just weird and pointless enough to become quaint, hanging around until a mid-sized American city made it a part of their identity.

Who is the First Four for? It’s for anybody who’s willing to open their hearts and their channel guide for two teams they’ve never heard of. Somewhere along the way, I, too, fell in love with this weird lump hanging off the side of the perfect 64-team bracket.