The Magnificent Seven

There is a great deal more than Madness lurking within the Division 1 NCAA Basketball Tournament. There are equally strong traditions, symmetries, and even normalities that also define this annual rite of passage. And one of the most powerful of those is the perennial dominance displayed by college basketball's "Blue Bloods." These seven programs, each of which has won at least four NCAA titles, have collectively harvested 44 of the 84 championship trophies awarded since the inauguration of the tournament in 1939.

In Blue Bloods: The Seven Greatest College Basketball Programs of All Time, Mark Mehler and Jeff Tiberii take a close look at those magnificent seven-Kentucky, Kansas, UCLA, North Carolina, Duke, Indiana, and the University of Connecticut-examining how they have managed over multiple decades to establish themselves as American basketball royalty. While there are many commonalities among them- legendary coaches, heroic players, fanatical fan bases, etc.-that help explain much of their success, each program has traveled its own unique path to glory, complete with plenty of deep lows offsetting the dizzying highs. In addition, Blue Bloods examines several additional basketball programs including Michigan State and Villanova which have likewise made indelible marks over many years, but fall just shy of blue blood status. Call them the "light-blue bloods."

All the history, ultimately leading to the fulfillment of generations of hoop dreams, comes alive in these pages.