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MARCH MADNESS IS famous for Cinderella stories, but these days the NCAA tournament is rigged for the top seeds: The best contestants from smaller conferences often can't make it to the Big Dance. So how did we get here -- and how do we fix it?
Seeking to boost revenues and exposure, every conference except the Ivy League has decided, one after another over half a century, to stage its own tournament following the regular season and then automatically send the winner of that playoff, not its regular-season champion, into the NCAA field. So a team can work for four months to prove it's the best in class among its traditional rivals, only to slip up on a Thursday afternoon and watch its season gurgle down the drain. That's simply unfair to the best mid-majors.
Three years ago, Stony Brook went 23 -- 6 in the regular season and dominated the America East, but it had a bad shooting night and lost by two points to Albany in its conference tournament, which happened to be played in ... Albany. Last year Iona went 17 -- 3 in the MAAC, leading the paack, but, playing its third conference tournament game in three days, it lost to Manhattan in the final. This year Valparaiso had the best record in the Horizon League by a wide margin but tripped in overtime in its conference semifinal against Green Bay, a squad ranking 84 slots below the Crusaders in ESPN's Basketball Power Index.
Overall, 10 conferences sent teams that weren't their best to the NCAA tournament in 2014, including five that were worse than the average D1 program, according to BPI. In 2015, six leagues sent suboptimal representatives, including four "champions" that were actually third best or worse in their conferences. And 10 more leagues saw their best teams go down in this year's conference tournaments.
There's now enough talent across college basketball that the top mid-majors add quality players and genuine competitiveness to the NCAA tournament. But when unworthy replacements fluke their way in, they tend to get crushed. They also cause bilge to bubble up from the bottom of brackets. This year, for example, Chattanooga and Stony Brook are interesting underdogs and would have been intriguing picks as very deep seeds, especially in pools that rewarded big upsets. Instead, Austin Peay and Farleigh Dickinson and Holy Cross snagged auto-bids and flooded into the 16-seeds; this forced Stony Brook into a tough 13-seed and turned Chattanooga into an overslotted 12.
The NCAA tournament selection committee isn't helping matters by making it so hard for smaller-conference teams to win at-large bids. The pooh-bahs have made it clear in recent years that they would rather include also-rans from the ACC or Pac-12 (and capture their viewers) than invite, say, last year's Murray State team, which went 16 -- 0 in the Ohio Valley but -- you guessed it -- lost in the OVC tournament final (by one point, on a closing-seconds 3-point heave, after a clock malfunction). Even Wichita State, one of the 25 best teams in the country this season, earned a measly play-in seed after losing in the Missouri Valley semifinals.
But the real culprits here are the conferences and, indeed, the mid-major schools themselves. They simply want the extra revenues that come from cramming more games into the interval after the regular season. So here's a suggestion: Don't let bids ride on the outcomes of those games; fans would care intensely about beating regional rivals in conference tournaments whether or not an NCAA tourney spot were on the line. Even if conferences keep the current system, they could make the process fairer. For instance, they could seed regular-season champions directly into conference-tournament finals. Or they could give regular-season winners revenge rights: Valpo loses? OK, it still gets to face the Horizon tourney winner afterward to play into the NCAA field.
Everyone loves upsets. But the best upsets are the product of David and Goliath both being genuinely good teams. The point is: These games should take place in the second half of March, not the first.