New NCAA Basketball Format Announced
by Year2 on Jul 12, 2010 4:00 PM EDT
in SEC Basketball
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PrintWhen the NCAA announced that it was expanding the tournament to 68 teams, I assumed that it meant that instead of one play-in game, we'd have four. Specifically, it would push the eight worst teams to the 16-seed level and make more room for the teams that actually have a chance at winning a game or two.
Turns out, that's not what's happening.
The number of 16-seed play-in games is increasing, but it's only going up to two, not four. Instead, there will be another pair of them for the last four at-large teams in the tournament. That means that, until two days before the 64-team bracket kicks in, we won't know for sure the full composition of the 11- and/or 12-seed line. These new sets of play-in games are going to be called the "First Four."
This is a very NCAA-ian way of doing things, and it clearly illustrates the difference between college football and the sports where the NCAA is directly involved with the post season. Because the majority of schools in Division I basketball are not perennial powers, the NCAA must take as egalitarian a posture as it can. Forcing eight conference champions (no matter how middling the conferences) to the 16-seed line is too unfair to the body as a whole. Therefore we get this "First Four" garbage. Meanwhile, the BCS gets to largely ignore the irrelevant-to-the-post-season Sun Belt Conference for the 13th straight year.
This issue cuts right to the heart of what you think the purpose of the tournament is. Clearly it's not just for determining a champion, or else it would be smaller than 64 teams and the Patriot League wouldn't have a guaranteed spot. I get that you have to throw a bone to the smaller conferences when they have an equal say in how things work.
What makes the tournament great is that almost every game is a competitive match up. The 1-16 games have never been great, and the 2-15 upsets are increasingly rare. Kicking the current 15-seeds down a notch and adding more at-large teams to the middle increases the number of good games. Perhaps the 2-15 games wouldn't get much better, but the 3-14 games sure would be and so on. That would have improved the tournament as a whole.
Instead, we only get to add one new at-large to the middle and basically preserve the awfulness of what the 2-15 line has become. This is a simple ratings grab to try to actually get some viewers to tune in on Tuesday night by tossing in some borderline at-larges with the 16-seed play-in games.
This "First Four" construct is not really worth the expansion up to 68. However if this kind of decision making is the price we have to pay to hold the tournament in the first place, then it is worth it in the end.
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Playoffs?!
The NCAA Basketball Tournament is a great example of playoffs run-amock. I’ll gladly take the BCS with some additional fine-tuning over an ever-expanding, increasingly-unweildly parody of an already flawed system like March Madness has become…
MileHighReport.com member since 02/06/07, promoted to "Position Coach" (i.e. new staff writer) on 02/16/10!
This is one of the problems I have with a playoff
It’s not necessarily that the concept itself is flawed — though it is — but that the entity that would put it into place is flawed. A “plus-one” might be able to be done through an outside organization like the BCS, but once things really start to resemble a playoff, the NCAA is going to pull the plug on anyone but the NCAA doing it. And then we won’t have a first-round matchup of Alabama vs. Ohio State or Texas vs. Oregon — we’ll have Florida vs. Troy and Penn State vs. Nevada. Um, hooray?
Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.
As stupid as this is...
… it’s not as stupid as the BCS. And I don’t think it’s impossible to have a system which has the twin goals of giving every one a shot (fairness) while also crowning a worthy champ. Every D1 conference, regardless of size, gets its conference champ in the field. Every team, at the beginning of the year, has a mechanism by which they can compete for the national title. Even Coppin St. has to be eliminated on the field of play, just like Duke or UNC.
At the same time, for all the bitching about letting the little guy in, it serves a second function other than basic fairness — it makes the top seeds’ draw a little easier. So it helps the top teams in the nation by making their path to the title game a little easier, which also is just. They earned an easier draw. The NCAA tournament has a pretty solid record of crowning a top ten team as the champion, and it’s usually a #1 seed. Villanova was a long time ago. Basketball, despite its one and done format and access granted to all of its member schools, very rarely gives us an “accidental champion.” Hell, wild card teams win the Super Bowl or the World Series more often the NCAA crowns an “accidental champion.”
Fake Pundit. Real Fan.
And The Valley Shook!
Except your definition of "accidental champion" is too narrow
We all know that the best team doesn’t always win a game in sports. It’s possible that the best team in a given year has a bad game and is eliminated in an early. And the more rounds you have, the more likely you are to have a loss by the team that is actually the best one, which created an “accidental champion.” The idea that only a win in the finals by a low-seeded team would be an “accidental champion” doesn’t account for the fact the resulting champion might not have had to defeat the best team in the field.
Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.
"Best team"
That’s pretty arbitrary. There are more than 300 teams plaing D1 basketball (and 120 playing football). Determining the best team with a 30 game schedule is almost impossible. You can get an idea of the best grouping of teams, but the #1 ranked team is not the “best” team per se… it’s a guess. It’s an educated guess, but a guess nonetheless.
Defining a deserving champ as one of the top 10 teams out of a field of over 300 is hardly a broad definition. Without checking, I think only one 4-seed (Arizona) has won the title since Villanova, and they are the lowest ranked team. A 1-seed wins it about half the time and 1 or 2 seed wins it virtually every tournament.
Despite the hype, the champion usually is a team that has a legitimate claim to being the best team in the regular season.
Fake Pundit. Real Fan.
And The Valley Shook!
"Giving every one a shot"
only seems fair if you’re in the second half of the bracket. The loud claim that march madness ruins the regular season is very, very real, and even more so with the stupid way conference grant a bid: let’s use the 4-5 game tournament instead of the 20 game season to decide who is best.
College basketball is entertaining because we all get to bet on the games, outside of the final four that’s really the only reason it stands up against football in terms of attention. Teams right around .500 in their conference routinely make the ncaa tournament. Would the BCS be better if we gave Kansas State, North Carolina, Purdue and Tennessee a shot at an NC in a 2009 BCS tournament?
Aside from 1985, which tourney was an injustice?
If your premise is that the tourney is tainted by granting access to near 500 teams, show the harm. When has a near 500 team won the title? When did the “best” team fail to win the title?
I agree the field is too large and ruins the regular season, but I think a field of two also ruins the regular season in that it turns choosing a champ into a mockery. It’s a popularity contest. No one has benefitied more than the SEC, and LSU specifically, but that doesn’t make the system any more just. A 12-game season cannot properly sort 120 teams (and the 65 BCS teams) down to the two best teams. It’s a convenient lie we use.
Fake Pundit. Real Fan.
And The Valley Shook!
We're looking at this from two opposite ends.
You’re asking me to show you the harm in allowing a .500 team into the bracket. I’m asking you why a .500 teams belongs in the bracket.
You’re also suggesting that I’m defending a 2-team BCS, which I’m not. I’m saying that a March Madness translated to football would, IMO, be a bad thing for the sport and for me as a fan.
by KevinHD on Jul 13, 2010 12:02 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
"As stupid as this is... it’s not as stupid as the BCS."
Not “as stupid,” certainly. Far, far stupider, assuming your goal is to construct a tournament designed to fairly and efficiently determine the best team in the country. If your goal is to get high TV ratings and set off an orgy of gambling, then I agree, the basketball tournament is brilliant.
Don't Panic.
by 4.0 Point Stance on Jul 13, 2010 10:26 AM EDT up reply actions
Last year there were four tournaments for college basketball. The NCAA, The NIT, something called the college insider tournament
and i can’t think of the other one. The NCAA should just goto 96 teams and get rid of all the other tournaments.
I'm all about covering the spread and moneylines. Glory favors the bold. Chance favors the prepared mind. Luck, well i have that too. University of Utah goes to the Pac-12 conference in 2011. I expect them to compete immediately for the conference CG. I still will always follow the Mountain West Conference. Brock Lesnar will defeat Cain Velasquez and face the winner of Junior Dos Santos vs Roy Nelson where he will defeat JDS and stake his claim as pound for pound champion.
by wolfmanshowlforever on Jul 13, 2010 12:52 PM EDT reply actions
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