2003 AMC 10B Problem 15

There are 100 players in a single tennis tournament. The tournament is single elimination, meaning that a player who loses a match is eliminated. In the first round, the strongest 28 players are given a bye, and the remaining 72 players are paired off to play. After each round, the remaining players play in the next round. The tournament continues until only one player remains unbeaten. The total number of matches played is

\textbf{(A) } \text{a prime number} \qquad\textbf{(B) } \text{divisible by 2} \qquad\textbf{(C) } \text{divisible by 5} \qquad\textbf{(D) } \text{divisible by 7} \qquad\textbf{(E) } \text{divisible by 11}

Full credit goes to MAA for authoring these problems. These problems were taken on the AOPS website.