Let ‘em Play: An Alternative Approach To Selecting the Last Four In

Sum Mehrnama

Another weekend in March has passed us by, and again there are countless grumblings about how the NCAA Selection Committee has “fudged the bucket” once again. Don’t get me wrong at all, with seedings like Duke as a 6 and Butler as a 5, and decisions such as allowing Arkansas and Purdue in at the expense of Syracuse and Drexel, the Committee deserves extreme torture. Yes, that’s right … 12 consecutive hours of listening to John Madden praise Brett Favre.

Now for some time people, such as Jim Boeheim, have been stammering for expanding the tournament. That idea is just stupid. A 128-team tournament would take eons to complete. A birth in the tourney would no longer have great significance and lose prestige. However, there is another option, which I will present here.

Each year there are about 12 – 20 legitimate “bubble” teams. Unfortunately, there are only about 4-8 spots available for them per year, and this leads to blasphemous decisions such as Air Force getting in last year, Arkansas, Purdue, Illinois and Stanford getting in this year, and other deserving teams being left out. Of course, there are people that will disagree with my assessment that Drexel deserved to get in this year and Illinois did not, and we could argue for hours upon hours with no resolution. Well, instead of bickering, why don’t we allow these teams to prove they belong? That’s right, beat the other bubble teams to show you belong.

Here’s how I see it playing out. First, let’s get rid of the dreaded play-in game, so we’ll have 31 automatic bids and 33 at-large bids. I mean, why should a team who earned its way in via winning its conference tourney have to take a back seat to a team that “bubbled” it’s way in? Selection Sunday rolls around, and the committee announces 15 teams in each of the 4 regions. However, the 12-seed will be left blank in all four regions. Then, the committee names 16 bubble teams. These 16 are broken into 4 pods of 4 teams each, with each pod being attached to one of the regions. Each pod will be a 2-day tournament with the winner getting into the attached region as the 12-seed. The location for each mini-tourney will be wherever the 12-seed for each region would play in the first round. The games would take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the 12-seeds would play their first round games on the Friday.

Confusing? Somewhat. This is one way that the tourney can be “expanded” without making it obscene. This way, if a bubble team doesn’t make the tournament, it blames itself instead of the pompous committee with the chair who provides vague answers for why Team D deserves to be in over Team A.