Yesterday, the participants of the Division I NCAA Men’s Tournament were name. This year field has 68 teams three more than last year field. To some people and me it is excessively many teams, but it is highly unlikely that the NCAA is going back to the 64-team tournament. With that said, now we must come up with solutions to make the tournament better.
Some Conferences should not have tournaments to determine the automatic bid for the NCAA Tournament.
If there is one problem with some the lower tier conferences is that, a lower seeded team in the conference tournament could win the tournament and get the automatic bid. Especially if they played poorly during the season and then get hot, winning three or four games in a row. Look at the classic Harvard-Princeton playoff game, the two best teams in the Ivy League all season played an extra game to determine the sole winner of the automatic bid. If the some of these conferences lose, the tournaments the regular season will have more significance, and besides do the SWAC, MEAC, Summit, and the Big Sky Conference make money in these tournaments anyway? If they do great, if not it is time to lose them.
Time to CAPPED conference bids they received.
One thing the BCS somewhat got right in determining who has earned the privilege in there big time bowl games, by capping the number of teams in big time conferences. The BCS rules states the maximum the Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big 10, PAC and the Big East can send to these games is 2 each. I love that, and the Men's basketball tournament should do. Just because a conference is tough, does not mean they should have more than 50 percent of its team. With the capped, it will make the regular season better to watch, as teams fight for the few precious spots available.
Automatic Bids should be automatic bids!
This year the selection committee got the dream half-right. The four play-in games; half of them have "bubble" teams playing in these games, and there should be more. It is not fair for teams like Alabama State and Arkansas-Little Rock who earned their conference's automatic bids being force to play in extra game to be in the tournament. In addition, it is not fun to watch, now what is fun to watch are UAB-Clemson, USC-VCU, Marquette-Missouri, and Georgia-Michigan State in the play-in games. That is action, the rating will be high on a Tuesday and Wednesday and it will be talk about much more what some team who "earned" the privilege to get beat by 20 to a number one seed.
National Champion pick will be on twitter and facebook very soon, and the best of luck to those are taking part in the madness.
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