You would be eliminating any point of the regular season. Low majors, sorry, you're out before it starts. High majors, congrats, just based on your conference membership, you basically have to just be not horrible.
Taking these one at a time:
Eliminating any point of the regular season.
- "Low majors, sorry, you're out before it starts." How is that different than now? Now or under my proposal they get an auto-bid but they don't have a plausible chance to win the tournament. Also, the extra 12 at-large bids wouldn't be limited to high majors so low majors would have more chances to get into the tournament that they can't win.
- "High majors, congrats, just based on your conference membership, you basically have to just be not horrible." Two things: First, it isn't based on conference membership, it is based on statistically valid comparisons of teams. Per NET Nebraska is the worst team in the B1G and they are substantially better than the best team in the SWAC. Second, how is this different than now? Lunardi currently has eight B1G teams in with three on the bubble: Michigan is the last team to avoid the play-in, Rutgers is in a play-in, and Indiana is the first team out. Those three teams are 11-9/17-13, 12-8/18-12, and 9-11/18-12. Indiana played their typically pathetic OOC in which their only loss was their Challenge game then went sub .500 in the league. They are 3-8 on the road and 3-7 in Q1 games. They aren't horrible and they are substantially better than about two dozen teams that will make the tournament but they aren't a good team and they don't even remotely resemble a Championship caliber team but they are squarely on the bubble. If they beat Michigan on Thursday night they are probably in. If your contention is that we shouldn't let in mediocre teams, that ship already sailed. We are already letting in mediocre teams at 68 (and would be at 64 as well).
Beyond that, why do we want better, mediocre P5 teams in? Do we want them to win? I sure as hell don't. It's part of the reward for a great season, that you open with a few facto bye game. In the small minority of cases you lose that bye game,.that's fine, and fun.
I get the argument for the bye. The #1 seeds earned the right to play the little sisters of the poor in round one but I still have a fundamental problem with letting in as many tallest midgets as we do. I'd be fine staying at 68 (or preferably going back to 64) if we'd put in a rule that conferences only get auto-bids if they have at least one team in the top 80 or 100 of the final NET rankings. This year that would cut your auto-bids from 32 down to 19 and increase your at-large slots from 36 up to 45 or 49. You'd still have a few really bad teams in the tournament but they would have earned their way in by winning a league tournament in which there was at least one team that my High School couldn't beat.
It would be one thing if these mid majors were consistently.taking advantage of their autobids, upsetting a bunch of teams, and winning titles. They aren't. So replacing them with blah P5 teams, will either produce the same results, but in a less interesting manner, or they'll start winning more, which I think would actually be worse.
I really don't get this argument at all. If the mid majors were consistently upsetting a bunch of teams and winning titles then:
- After a few occasions they wouldn't be upsets anymore, they'd be expected, and
- It would be abundantly apparent that our ranking systems are seriously flawed.
They are upsets when the mid majors win and our ranking systems aren't seriously flawed as evidenced by the fact that out of 576 teams seeded #13 and higher exactly zero have EVER won a second-weekend game. Our ranking systems say that those teams suck and those ranking systems are NOT wrong. Those teams do suck. Sure, they occasionally pull off an upset but that is mostly a volume issue. Broken clocks are right twice a day. They've had 576 first round opportunities and won 63 games (22% for the 13's, 15% for the 14's, 6% for the 15's, and 1% for the 16's). They've had 63 second round opportunities and won 10 games (19% for the 13's, 9% for the 14's, 22% for the 15's, and NONE for the 16's). They've had 10 second weekend opportunities and NEVER won.
I'd much rather see the SWAC
Champion tallest midget play the Michigan/Indiana loser in a game that could conceivably go either way than to see them matched up against Arizona, Baylor, or Kentucky in a laugher.
Football is different, because the field is so small. By giving a spot to an autobid, you are taking a spot from a legit title contender, a worthy top 5 claim team. In basketball the bubble teams have zero claim to be deserving of a national title. They are just the beneficiary of the format of the event. That's what it is, an event, that includes the conference tourneys. Once you start taking it as seriously as being upset that the 9th place Big Ten team is out to let the SWAC champ in, you are treating it as something completely different than what it is. If that's what you want, that's fine. But in that case you shouldn't want any sort of monstrous single elimination bracket
I strongly agree that Football is vastly different. The small field in football is why I was adamantly opposed when you and others suggested a CFB tournament that included all conference Champions. I strongly oppose that because it would be not only unfair but insane to exclude an actual NC Caliber runner-up (or probably tie-breaker loser) from the SEC or B1G in order to make room for the tallest midget from the MAC. The example I always use is 2019 when MAC Champion Miami, OH was 8-5 with losses:
- by 14 to Ball State
- by 22 to WMU
- by 22 to Cincy - AAC Champ
- by 24 to Iowa - a middling B1G team
- by 71 (not a typo, SEVENTY-ONE) to tOSU - B1G Champ
I don't feel as strongly about Basketball because the excluded teams (ie, the IU/M loser) are NOT legitimate NC Contenders anyway.
But that leads me to my conclusion that we SHOULD expand to 80 teams. We are ALREADY taking a slew of teams that are NOT legitimate NC Contenders:
- 23 leagues do NOT have a team in the top-25 of the NET rankings. Those 23 auto-qualifiers are NOT legitimate NC Contenders even if the best team in the league wins.
- At least half of the 36 at-large teams are NOT legitimate NC Contenders. Call it half or 18 making 41 total.
So you have a "National Championship Tournament" in which we've accepted up front that 41 of the 68 entrants are NOT legitimate NC Contenders. What difference would it make for us to make it 53 of the 80? Either way there are a slew of teams that are only there for show but my way gives us a better schedule (16-game days on the weekend) and a lot more games that could go either way, and my way isn't quite as grossly unfair to major conference teams.
