This is something of an ongoing rant of mine. I didn't put it in the
BB thread because it is a related but somewhat separate topic about the NCAA Tournament itself.
My long-running complaint is that CBB as it is currently construed is extremely unfair to major conference teams. According to the NCAA's NET metric the best 68 CBB teams are in just 13 leagues:
- 12 are in the B1G
- 9 are in the Big East
- 9 are in the SEC
- 7 are in the ACC
- 7 are in the P12
- 6 are in the Big 12
- 5 are in the A10
- 5 are in the AAC
- 3 are in the WCC
- 2 are in the MWC
- 1 is in the SoCon
- 1 is in the MVC
- 1 is in the ASUN
The other 19 leagues have a grand combined total of zero tournament-quality teams. Their best teams are ranked in the 70's (Ivy, MAC, Southland, Am East). Most of these other conferences (14 of 19) do not even have a team in the top-100, five do not have a team in the top-136 (double the tournament size) and two (SWAC, MEAC) do not have a team in the top-200.
This is grossly unfair to a major conference team such as Minnesota and Purdue. According to the NCAA's NET rankings the Gophers are the 44th best team in the nation. There are 68 slots in the tournament so they should easily be in but alas, they are two games under .500 so they likely need to go on a ridiculously improbable run of beating Northwestern (#159), Iowa (#34), Illinois (#39) either Wisconsin (#24), Michigan (#25), or Rutgers (#31), then either Michigan State (#7), Ohio State (#16), Maryland (#18), Purdue (#33), Penn State (#35), Indiana (#59), or Nebraska (#196) to make it in. Worse, they have to accomplish this in five games in five days.
This is grossly unfair to teams like Minnesota and Purdue as well as similarly situated teams in other strong leagues.
It also makes the tournament LESS entertaining. I know a lot of people will disagree at least at first, but hear me out:
The bottom four or so seeds (#13-#16) are generally the league tournament champions of the 19 leagues referred to above which do not have a single team that is actually tournament-worthy. Thus, instead of getting tournament-worthy teams from those leagues, we simply get the "tallest midget" out of the MEAC, SWAC, etc.
Most people love the upsets but how many upsets are there, really?
- 1-139: #16 seeds have one win ever in 140 tries.
- 8-132: #15 seeds have 8 wins in 140 tries (roughly one every 4-5 years) against the #2 seeds.
- 21-119: #14 seeds have 21 wins in 140 tires (roughly three every five years) against the #3 seeds.
- 29-111: #13 seeds have 29 wins in 140 tries (roughly four every five years) against the #4 seeds.
It gets worse in the second round:
- 0-1: The one #16 seed that made it to the second round lost.
- 1-7: Only one #15 seed has ever made the S16.
- 2-19: Only two #14 seeds have ever made the S16.
- 6-23: Only six #13 seeds have ever made the S16.
It ends the second weekend:
- 0-9: The nine 13-15 seeds that made the S16 ALL lost their S16 game.
These crappy teams are simply irrelevant to the National Championship. No team seeded #13 or worse has EVER made it to even the E8.
My view is that we should do one of two things, either:
- Cut the tournament down to just 32 teams (because no #9-16 seed has EVER won a F4 game), or
- Expand the tournament to 80 teams.
The purpose of expanding the Tournament to 80 teams would be threefold:
- To reduce the disparity between the best teams left out and the worst teams included, and
- To improve the quality of opponents for the top seeds in the early rounds, and
- To make the tournament schedule better for fans.
Point 1:
Using this year as an example, there will be multiple teams like Purdue and Minnesota from good leagues with ~.500 records ranked in the 30's-40's left out. There will also be multiple leagues that produce champions who couldn't realistically compete with Purdue's or Minnesota's second stringers. Adding 12 more at-large teams would alleviate that at least somewhat.
Point 2:
As pointed out above, those "tallest midget" league champions have a dismal record in the tournament. The bottom four seeds are a combined 59-501 (.011) in the first round, 9-50 (.015) in the second round and none have EVER won a S16 game. As you will see below, making them face a better team first would improve the quality of opponents for the top teams leading to more upsets and a more exciting tournament.
Point 3:
I've always thought it was silly that the busiest two days of the tournament are the first two, a Thursday and a Friday. Most of the fans are at work trying to sneak peeks at our phones to check scores. My plan fixes that.
My proposal would be to expand the tournament to 80 teams by effectively making the #13-#16 seeds ALL face a "play-in". My schedule would be as follows:
First weekend:
Thursday/Friday:
- Each of the eight sites would host two games, eight games per day, 16 games total to get down to 64 teams. Since there would only be eight games per day they could start later in the day and all or at least most of them could be played when fans could actually watch.
Saturday/Sunday:
- Each of the eight sites would host four games, 16 games per day, 32 games total to get down to 32 teams. Thus, the busiest two days of the tournament would be a Saturday and a Sunday so people would be off work and could watch.
Monday/Tuesday:
- Each of the eight sites would host two games, eight games per day, 16 games total to get down to 16 teams.
Second Weekend:
Saturday/Sunday:
- Each of the four sites would host two games, four games per day, eight games total to get down to eight teams.
Monday/Tuesday:
- Each of the four sites would host one game, two games per day, four games total to get down to four teams.
Third weekend:
Saturday:
- The Final Four site would host two games to get down to two teams.
Monday:
- The National Championship game.