NCAA's insistent terminology

I seem to recall that when they first started the play in games, they referred to them as just that. Now those two games are the first round. To me the first round is when sixty-four teams take the court.

For some reason this reminds me of a comment Wade Phillips made a few years ago when he was the head coach of the Cowboys. They had won the NFL Eastern Division and received a bye the first week of the playoffs. Even though they hadn't played yet, he was talking about how they were the first Cowboys team to make it to the second round in a long time. I thought that was pretty funny.
 
So Tennessee is playing it's third game in the second round tomorrow?

It's a joke they were one of the last two teams in as an 11 seed, but they legitimately qualified for the tournament. I guess if they had beaten a crappy aggy team just once they wouldn't have been in this position. However, they played their first round game on Wednesday not yesterday. It wasn't a "play in game".
 
Apparently they are calling those games "The First Four". Seems like The Last Four would be more appropriate - that is the last four to make the field of sixty-four teams.

Yes, whether it's for a 16th seed, or 11th seed, it's a play in game in my view.
 
I agree it's a bit ridiculous now, but I take it as an indication that the field will continue to grow. When the "first round" grows to 8, 16 or 32 games, it would be ridiculous to call them play-in games.
 
I'm curious as to how that somehow makes the choices of which regions and which seeds get "play-in games" less nonsensical. It's like they lined up all the double digit seeds on the wall and had a monkey throw darts at it.
 
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