Every year the NCAA Tournament delights millions of basketball fans—and infuriates millions of soap-opera viewers, whose favorite daily dramas are preempted by the games.

The following is offered as a brief overview of college basketball and its signature tournament, for the non-fan of the game.

Basketball was invented when Dr. James Naismith, a gym instructor in Massachusetts, while looking for another way to punish students besides sit-ups and pushups, hit upon the idea of nailing a peach basket to the wall and making them try to throw a ball into it.

"Basket-ball," ironically, became wildly popular, and the Great Peach Famine of New England was the result, as every basket available for harvesting the crop was being used in the new regional pastime.

Over time Naismith became reconciled to the "sport," and made such notable changes as reducing the number of players on a side (from 60 or 70 to five), instituting the "dribble," and prohibiting street shoes in the gym.

From there the game took off, becoming a staple in YMCAs and schools across the country. Colleges began to field teams and build arenas, as it was found that a surprising number of people not only would tear around in their underwear tossing a ball at a basket but would pay to watch other people do so.

College basketball flourished in the 1930s and ‘40s, and a national tournament was instituted. The game was evolving from the plodding creature that was Naismith’s creation into the breakneck insanity it is today. Despite several scandals, the game grew steadily in popularity, playing to large and appreciative crowds, particularly in places like New York where the fans were very colorful and savvy, clapping and cheering lustily for one team or another, depending on the point spread.

Postseason tournaments and the crowning of a national champion became really hot stuff when TV entered the picture. Millions watched each spring, despite the fact that the same team, UCLA, won every year. And the tournament has grown year by year. 64 teams now participate, and proposals have been put forth to let everyone in, regardless of record. The prospect is dismaying, not only to soap-opera aficionados but to basketball purists—for what about the element of reward for a season well-played?

But in college basketball, as in all else, money talks, and besides, given enough hype, there’ll always be an audience for a tournament game, no matter how mediocre the participants.

Meanwhile, Dr. Naismith would have difficulty recognizing his child today. Basketball has been lifted from the musty gloom of the YMCA into the glare of enormous arenas. Players run like gazelles and soar above the basket like great birds, scoring with ridiculous ease. In Naismith’s conception of the game, scoring was supposed to be difficult, even impossible. The baskets were far above the heads of the players, the balls were lopsided and sometimes larger than the baskets, and players were encumbered by the many layers of clothing they had to wear in Victorian times.

But above all, Naismith would be appalled at the emphasis on winning at all costs. While he saw basket-ball as a gentleman’s game, today’s coaches of young men stalk the sidelines with hate and fury in their eyes, and every tournament game is a seething cauldron of emotions: anger, love, exultation, despair. Sort of like a soap opera.