Don’t get me wrong, I love March because of basketball. The college basketball tournaments are exciting to watch, but I am left with a question. Are they fair?
I don’t think so. Why should we reward a team based on one game’s performance and not on how they played consistently throughout the season.
My first problem, conference tournaments.
Let use the Ohio Vally Conference as an example. Eastern Kentucky (13-7 conference record) won the conference tournament championship game over Austin Peay (16-4 conference record) in a heartbreaker, 63-62. Eastern Kentucky gets the OVC’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Even though Austin Peay proved through the regular season, day in and day out, that they are the best team in the conference. Since they lost they won’t go to the Big Dance even though they deserve to. I hate the Major League Baseball and NFL wild card set up for the same reasons. Why should they even get a shot?
What’s the point of playing the regular season conference games except to get seeded in to a tournament that you might not even win? Look at UCLA in the PAC 10, the number 2 team in the country losing in the first round of the PAC10 Tournament with a conference record of 15-3. They are obviously the best team in the conference. If you’re a team in a minor conference with no at large bids, winning the tournament is your only hope of getting there, not your overall record. How is it fair that the possibility of a team with a losing record get in before a team with winning record, which has happened before.
I believe the most fair way to fix this is to let the NCAA tournament bid go to the team that wins the regular season and do away with the Conference Tournaments all together.
Second, I have a problem with the NCAA tournament being 65 teams. Its way too many.
How would you define the Tournament? It should be represenative of teams that deserve to be considered a National Champion or the Best Team in the NCAA. Are you going to tell me that teams like Belmont, Creighton, Eastern Kentucky, Florida A&M, Niagara and Pennsylvania deserve to be considered with teams such as Florida, Wisconsin, UCLA, or Ohio State? Does a hot team that happens to go on a winning streak deserve to be the Title winner. I don’t think so.
Belmont will get seeded against a seasoned tournament team only to get their ass handed to them. Why? Cause they do not belong there.
The National Championship and conference champions should be determined by looking at the teams’ performance as a whole, not by the outcome of one single game performance The current set up is fun to watch but is not by any means fair.
So here are two suggestions that may make things even:
1) Make the NCAA tournament include all 336 NCAA Division 1 Teams and eliminate the Conference Tournaments. It would only make the tournament a few days to a week longer. You could even do the first 2 or 3 rounds like the NIT with the better record team having the game on their home court. That would really be March Madness.
2) You seed the top 8 or 16 teams based on season records and play it out from there.That puts the best teams up for a chance.
College sports need to be based on performance of teams and not to be driven by money. The NCAA tournament is a big money maker for schools, conferences, NCAA and CBS. I think it is really taking away from the games. My suggestions may not be the best but they seem to make the most sense to me.
Entries (RSS)