Listen: If you have a fan base who wants to exclude auto-bidding teams from the NCAA basketball tournament, it’s Iowa Hawkeye.. The two hottest iterations of the Iowa Hoop over the last 20 years were lost in the first round. Their individual results were absolutely uninteresting. Otherwise, it will not rotate.
But it’s ominous to see the possibility that SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey will drive away teams like your Richmond and Northwest (and St. Peters who just beat Sankey’s loved ones). Kentucky Wildcats This is to prevent March Madness from becoming March Madness (in the first round of last year). Jeff Goodman scooped on this possibility in his Field of 68 podcast, which rounded earlier this week.
As Goodman hinted at “Big Boy,” Sanky isn’t the only one who wants to abolish the single bid league. Sankey is yelling at the quiet part. In the changing landscape of college athletics, a vacuum of power is about to exist where the NCAA stood. It already exists in college football, where there is no NCAA championship for the highest level sports, so what is it to say that the same could not exist for basketball?
In reality, we’re struggling to square what the future SEC (and perhaps Big Ten) -centric tournaments will look like. So if two meetings create their own 32 team tournaments, the calculation is easy.welcome home Related NIT!! But can you be sure that the winner of that tournament is called the national champion?Especially from school at the end One of those meetings Was it 10 years ago?
- 2012-Kentucky
- 2006 & 2007-Florida
- 2002-Maryland (a huge asterisk because it was an ACC school at the time)
- 2000- Michigan
ACC has eight champions in this millennium (counting Maryland). Big East?? seven. Big 12? There are three, but the last two.
Tell me: If you are a non-SEC or Big Ten Conference, wouldn’t it be in your interest to maintain the current structure without these two? The reliability of the tournament will be hit, but it’s much more important than the virtual new tournament if the remaining four power conferences keep all the other conferences on board together to maintain the current settings. .. Maybe you’ll see Pac-12 join the SEC and Big Ten-their last champion was 1997! -But the tournament, which includes the remaining 29 meetings, is more reliable.
Another point: Eliminating automatic bidding removes the parts that make March great every year. In conference tournaments, the balance of 22 conferences that send only one team to the tournament is very large. Perhaps more multi-bid leagues will be seen to fill the void left by the conferences that create their own tournaments.
That’s exactly what Sanky’s hearsay is, so it’s difficult to know exactly what his ideal condition is. However, it’s hard to imagine the total removal of automatic bidding in 64-68 team tournaments. For simplicity, suppose the top 16 meeting champions receive automatic bids and the remaining 48 are split into the top 6 meetings (SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big 12, Pac-12, and Big East). ..
The only team to win Who will freeze The assumption is St. Peters. But it will replace these 16 teams with more Michigan and Indiana. The Charminsoft team will resume, but it’s not worth bidding on the most exciting American tournaments.
For example, can you imagine expanding the bubble to a team like Troika in the 7-13 team of Big Ten? Maryland, Northwest, Pennsylvania. None of them had an overall win record, but they will have some similarities in the case of participating in a tournament as automatic bidding is reduced.
It may also mean reducing attendance from non-exclusive meetings with multiple bids.but Mountain waist Although it was 0-4, the non-champion may have been left behind as the power conference is trying to increase its presence in the tournament.
Well, the case For That (Lord please help me) is that we are unlikely to exclude teams that have the ability to win the game in the first round. KenPom had eight Power6 conference teams before the tournaments in the top 64 that did not participate in the tournament. But again, do we really want to live in a world where 17-15 St. Johns has a case of hosting an NCAA tournament?
Listen, I have a desire for an “elite” version of March Madness. But instead of putting a fly in the NCAA tournament ointment, Sanky should be trying to develop something that can exist with it.
One of the headwinds that college basketball is currently facing is that schedules simply don’t help their profits. There are actually only two time slots for sports to break through. “Feast Week” at Thanksgiving tournaments and posts.Super ball.. So my idea could be to cannibalize Feast Week and create an elite version of the pre-conference tournament with its own championship that will start the post-Super Bowl timeframe in one fell swoop.
please think about it Champions LeagueA style tournament in which 16 excellent teams from the previous year participate. To put a thumbs up on the scale of the power conference, those schools will make up at least 12 of the 16 slots. However, the conference wants to assign spots, but in my opinion, assign spots to regular season and tournament champions. If you do not meet the previous criteria, make sure that the national champion of the previous season is involved. Then add three or four best teams (KenPom in this example) outside of it. Therefore, it looks like this:
- Gonzaga (general)
- Houston (whole)
- Kansas (National Champion / Big 12 Co-Champion / Tournament Champion)
- Baylor (Big 12 Co-Champion)
- Arizona (Pac-12 Champion / Tournament Champion)
- Kentucky (whole)
- Texas Tech (general)
- Duke (ACC Champion)
- Tennessee (SEC tournament champion)
- Villa Nova ((((Big East Tournament champion)
- UCLA (Pac-12 runner up)
- Auburn (SEC Champion)
- Virginia Tech ((((ACC tournament Champion; # 19 KenPom)
- Illinois (Big 10 Co-Champion; # 20 KenPom)
- Providence (Big East Champion; # 32 KenPom)
- Wisconsin (Big 10 Champion; # 37 KenPom)
My tycoon who puts Illinois and Wisconsin there instead of Iowa. But if you want Iowa to slip there and I don’t blame you, they will be the 13th seeded.
Anyway, we turn these 16 teams into four 4-team round-robin tournaments hosted by the Top 4 Seeds of Thanksgiving Week. Make some adjustments to limit duplication of meetings.
- Gonzaga Pod: Duke, Tennessee, Wisconsin
- Houston Pod: Texas Tech, Villanova, Illinois
- Kansas Pod: Kentucky, UCLA, Providence
- Baylor Pod: Arizona, Auburn, Virginia Tech
(If Iowa is here instead of Wisconsin, they will take VT spots, VT, Providence spots, Providence, Wisconsin spots)
The protruding pod is Kansas, which hosts Kentucky and UCLA. Three blue blood at the historic venue.
The winner of each pod went to the neutral site “Final 4” on the weekend after the Super Bowl to win the championship of this newly discovered tournament (Friday / Sunday). You can also send pod winners and runners to create brackets for eight teams in a five-day game on Wednesday / Friday / Sunday.
However, this will generate up to 24 high-profile non-conference games early in the season and reset the narrative in February prior to the busiest times of the sport.
My opinion that you shouldn’t touch March Madness is across the internet. However, I understand Sankey’s view, but I believe that the correct way to approach it is not an overhaul of the existing form, but a complementary tournament.
NCAA tournaments are the only thing an organization does right. Let’s leave it as it is.
