These teams play in 31 different conferences, some of which are considered either major, mid-major, or low-major conferences by the general public and sports media. Due to the term low-major having degrading connotations, some major media outlets and analysts have recently taken to calling the upper-tier of the non-BCS conferences "high-majors" while calling the bottom 16 of the 31 conferences "mid-majors". These distinctions are all unofficial; in fact, there is no real definition as to what makes a college basketball conference a major, high-major, or mid-major outside of being a BCS member in football.

After all,the winners of all 30 conference tournaments (plus the Ivy League's regular-season champion) receive an automatic bid to play in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament alongside 34 at-large selections made by the selection committee during the selection process. Most of the 34 at-large selections on Selection Sunday go to major-conference teams.