I don't pay as much attention to all the tourney details as others do. I was surprised to see both Houston and Alabama playing the first weekend at the same location. How are the locations chosen for 1 seeds now? Is this the first time two 1 seeds have played their first and second rounds at the same place?
The "pod" system allows for this. Maybe 15 years ago, they went to the pod system, instead of having 8 teams from the same region playing at one specific location,
Pod system works as follows
They rank the 16 teams in the top 4 seed lines, from #1-#16.
There are 8 possible first round "pod" locations they can play at.
They start with #1, and they choose the closest pod location to them.
They do the same thing with #2, and so on.
By the time it gets down to #13-#16 (the 4 seeds normally) they may need to get sent to far away locations because the close pods are already taken.
So at your pod, you could have 4 teams in the midwest regional, and 4 teams in the east regional. If your pod has the #1 seed in the east, and the #2 seed in the south, you would have the #1, #8, #9, #16 east team at your site, and the #2, #7, #10, and #16 site at your site as well.
So theoretically its possible (and it indeed happened this year) that the #1 and #2 teams can play in the same location in the first two rounds.
