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I've just finished (at 3:00 in the morning Central) plotting the NCAA regional groupings geographically. At a glance, you can see how well the NCAA balanced the competing goals of geographic compactness to save money and competitive balance among the regions. Unlike last year, where I used four copies of the U.S. map to fit in four regional groupings apiece, I tried this time to get all 16 regionals on one map. I thought it would help if I used a map that adjusted for the population of each state, thus giving me more space to use in California, Texas, Florida, and some other states. Here's what I came up with (numbers in parentheses are seeds, underlines indicate hosting sites). Unless you have unbelievable eyesight, you'll have to click on the map to enlarge it...

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