Championship Week

Championship Week (re-titled as Champ Week from 2016 onward) is ESPN's annual college basketball showcase of conference tournament games in the United States, which decide NCAA bids in early-to-mid-March. It typically lasts a little under 2 weeks, before basketball post-season play begins. The minor and mid-major conferences typically begin Championship Week and it ends on Selection Sunday with the brackets being unveiled. Over the years, more games have been added with the expansion of ESPN's numerous multicast channels.

Coverage of the NCAA conference tournaments is no longer mostly limited to ESPN, since the proliferation of competing sports networks such as CBS Sports Network and Fox Sports 1, as well as CBS's longstanding over-the-air coverage of the last weekend of conference championships, all of which air similar marathons opposite Championship Week. This has allowed even further exposure of the tournaments on national television.

For example, the Pac-12 tournament airs on Pac-12 Network and alternately on Fox Sports 1 and ESPN, the Big East on Fox and Fox Sports 1, and the Mountain West on CBS and CBS Sports Network.

ESPN typically schedules the games a year in advance. Many conferences get their only nationally televised game of the year during this week. ESPN programmer Burke Magnus points out that a single change can result in a domino effect.

It began in 1986 with 27 games, not all of which were live. It cut into 45 games. This franchise was greatly expanded with the creation of ESPN2.

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