Conference regular season champs get the autobid

No team with a losing conference record gets an at large (.500 is OK).

That's about it for me. Big picture I'd also like to shrink D1 by about 4-5 conferences and just have a true 64 team tournament but that's more of a meta post

(03-07-2019 06:27 PM)leofrog Wrote:  Y’all do understand that conferences decide who the autobid goes to, correct? If conferences wanted the bid to go to the regular season champion, then they could decide that. It’s not an NCAA rule.

Actually, that's not entirely true. Conferences get to decide how their champion is determined. The NCAA has up to now decided that every conference champion is invited. They could change that to say that every conference will have at least one team in the tournament, but not necessarily the team the conference has designated as its "champion".

In the OP it was suggested that there would be 12 first round games, with teams seeded 1-10 getting a bye. If there are 88 teams and 40 byes, then there must be 24 first round games (48 teams) with teams seeded 11-22 in each bracket. I have no problem with any of those suggestions, though I would prefer 80 teams with 48 byes.

1. Eliminate the CBI and CIT by expanding the NIT to 64. Every conference will have one representative in the NIT. At-large teams must have winning records.
2. Teams must have a WINNING record in conference to be eligible to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA's.

I like the idea of instead of the CBI and CIT having a few 16 team tournaments in destination cities over 4 days. I think the Vegas idea was good--they failed somewhere in the execution.

My change.
Rate the conferences 1-32 over the past three years. The top 16 rated conferences get an automatic bid for their regular season champion in addition to the auto bid for winning the conference tournament. Teams winning a regular season bid will be pre-assigned to a first round venue. You still have to fight for your seed so need to do well in your league tournament, but if you win the Big East you know you are going to Hartford or such. Gives fans of the better conference champions more time to plan their trips.

NIT I would expand back to 48 with an auto bid for the best team from each conference that isn't selected by the NCAA.

The regular season champ should get the auto bid. I don't understand why small conferences don't do this to ensure their best team gets in the tournament. I guess it's a money thing.

Theoretically, a team could lose every single game during the season and still win the national championship. That shouldn't be possible.

My proposed changes: NONE. ZIP. NADA.

The NCAA Tournament and the NFL playoffs are great as-is. I guess we can state that nothing is perfect, but those are by far the two postseasons with the *least* issues.

The MLB playoff could use some tweaks. For example, I'd like to see another wild card team with NFL-style seeding with a bye given to the top 2 division winners in each league. For each league, eliminate the 1-game wild card play-in and instead have 3 wild card teams plus the worst division winner play a 3-game series in round 1 (all at the home stadium of the higher seed with the division winner automatically getting home field just like the NFL). It would then be re-seeded for a 5-game series in round 2 and then have 7-game series for the LCS and World Series. Like I said, it would essentially be the NFL playoff format applied to baseball.

The NBA and NHL playoffs are too bloated, although it's sort of a necessary evil at this point. I'd love to tell them to cut some teams, but that would mean less money for the owners both in terms of box office and TV revenue... and anything that means less money for the owners is DOA.

The college football postseason... well, that's the one that requires some 10,000 word posts for revamping (which I have done multiple times).

(03-08-2019 06:08 PM)BcatMatt13 Wrote:  The regular season champ should get the auto bid. I don't understand why small conferences don't do this to ensure their best team gets in the tournament. I guess it's a money thing.

Theoretically, a team could lose every single game during the season and still win the national championship. That shouldn't be possible.

Money. Money. Money.

ESPN pays all of those small conferences money to have that one elimination "Championship Week" game where the winner goes dancing. There's simply nothing more compelling in sports than a "win-or-out" elimination game, which is why the NCAA Tournament is beloved by so many sports fans in the first place.

We can debate all day whether a single elimination tournament is the best way to determine the best team (whether we're talking about a conference or the national title). However, it's pretty clear that a single elimination tournament is the most *entertaining* way to have a postseason... and the TV networks pay accordingly.

(03-08-2019 07:16 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  The MLB playoff could use some tweaks. For example, I'd like to see another wild card team with NFL-style seeding with a bye given to the top 2 division winners in each league. For each league, eliminate the 1-game wild card play-in and instead have 3 wild card teams plus the worst division winner play a 3-game series in round 1 (all at the home stadium of the higher seed with the division winner automatically getting home field just like the NFL). It would then be re-seeded for a 5-game series in round 2 and then have 7-game series for the LCS and World Series. Like I said, it would essentially be the NFL playoff format applied to baseball.

I like the Wild Card games in baseball. I think if they expand to 32, which they will eventually, go with the NHL style divisions makes the most sense. 4 divisions of eight. 2 divisions each league.

Have 4 wildcards per league. 2 wildcards games. Winners go on to Division Series. Worst team of the wildcard winners gets the #1 team in league.

(03-08-2019 07:16 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  My proposed changes: NONE. ZIP. NADA.

The NCAA Tournament and the NFL playoffs are great as-is. I guess we can state that nothing is perfect, but those are by far the two postseasons with the *least* issues.

The MLB playoff could use some tweaks. For example, I'd like to see another wild card team with NFL-style seeding with a bye given to the top 2 division winners in each league. For each league, eliminate the 1-game wild card play-in and instead have 3 wild card teams plus the worst division winner play a 3-game series in round 1 (all at the home stadium of the higher seed with the division winner automatically getting home field just like the NFL). It would then be re-seeded for a 5-game series in round 2 and then have 7-game series for the LCS and World Series. Like I said, it would essentially be the NFL playoff format applied to baseball.

The NBA and NHL playoffs are too bloated, although it's sort of a necessary evil at this point. I'd love to tell them to cut some teams, but that would mean less money for the owners both in terms of box office and TV revenue... and anything that means less money for the owners is DOA.

The college football postseason... well, that's the one that requires some 10,000 word posts for revamping (which I have done multiple times).

The NCAA Tournament is a major event and beloved but the problem with college basketball isn't the post-season, it's the season. Attendance is falling viewership isn't great.

By the time college football ends there are maybe 60 teams left with any legitimate case for an at-large, the other 300 are mostly still in play but only as conference tournament champs who have to play another 16-20 games to get to that part of the season.

I would combine the selection of teams for the NCAAT and the NIT, using the NET rankings instead of a committee. The NET has proven to be a more realistic measure than RPI (which is why the selection committee didn't give the RPI much weight). The NET is very close to both the Massey Composite and KenPom rankings, and is as good a way as any to pick teams for post season play.

This would be my process. Using the NET rankings as they exist at the end of the regular season, the top 64 teams are automatic qualifiers (except teams that do not have a winning record), as are any regular season or tournament champions regardless of NET. The Top 32 would have a first round bye in the NCAAT. The next 32 (#33-64) would host a first round game played on Tues/Wed.

After all automatic qualifiers are determined, the remainder of the 96 team field would be filled by non-champions, starting with NET 65. First round winners would advance to the next round at a regular tournament site determined in advance. The losers would comprise the NIT field, where their NET rank would determine their seeding.

Since all 96 teams would be selected and seeded by the NET, the only task of the committee is to place them all in brackets, trying to minimize travel and intra-conference matchups as they do now.

This year, 15 regular season champions were ranked in the Top 64, and 17 ranked lower than that. So far, there have been 5 teams that won their conference tournament and thereby would qualify as well. There wouldn't be any significant difference in who plays. Just which teams get to play their way into the round of 64 and which wind up in the NIT.

(03-07-2019 10:12 PM)Jjoey52 Wrote:  Any team finishing under .500 in conference play is ineligible for NCAA tourney unless they win conference tourney.

If you want to expand tourney, go to 96 teams with top 32 conference champs getting a bye.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I've been saying the first for many years now.

(03-08-2019 06:08 PM)BcatMatt13 Wrote:  The regular season champ should get the auto bid. I don't understand why small conferences don't do this to ensure their best team gets in the tournament. I guess it's a money thing.

Theoretically, a team could lose every single game during the season and still win the national championship. That shouldn't be possible.

You're right. There's a money-related fix for this, but the NCAA would never do it.

The fix is: Change the distribution of March Madness money to reward conferences much more for having teams that win games in the tournament.

As it is, each tournament unit this year will be about $275,000. So change that. Make it $100,000 for each team that just makes the tournament but doesn't survive to the first Saturday/Sunday, and bump it up to $600,000 for each team that wins on the first Thursday/Friday. That's a $500,000 carrot to dangle in front of a conference as an incentive to make sure it's not giving its autobid to a lousy team that just got lucky for 3 games in the conference tournament.

(03-13-2019 10:53 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-08-2019 06:08 PM)BcatMatt13 Wrote:  The regular season champ should get the auto bid. I don't understand why small conferences don't do this to ensure their best team gets in the tournament. I guess it's a money thing.

Theoretically, a team could lose every single game during the season and still win the national championship. That shouldn't be possible.

You're right. There's a money-related fix for this, but the NCAA would never do it.

The fix is: Change the distribution of March Madness money to reward conferences much more for having teams that win games in the tournament.

As it is, each tournament unit this year will be about $275,000. So change that. Make it $100,000 for each team that just makes the tournament but doesn't survive to the first Saturday/Sunday, and bump it up to $600,000 for each team that wins on the first Thursday/Friday. That's a $500,000 carrot to dangle in front of a conference as an incentive to make sure it's not giving its autobid to a lousy team that just got lucky for 3 games in the conference tournament.

I agree that I would prefer the regular season champion to get the autobid. My only thoughts regarding competitive representation on keeping the conference tournament champion as the autobid, if I were the conference commissioner, is that the regular season champion may have injuries in the late season keeping them from being a force in the tournament and that having the "hot" team continue their streak could give us the best opportunity for an upset in the tournament. Still, I would prefer regular season champions.

Increase the NIT field, but by weaving it into a losers bracket from the NCAA tournament.

(03-13-2019 10:53 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-08-2019 06:08 PM)BcatMatt13 Wrote:  The regular season champ should get the auto bid. I don't understand why small conferences don't do this to ensure their best team gets in the tournament. I guess it's a money thing.

Theoretically, a team could lose every single game during the season and still win the national championship. That shouldn't be possible.

You're right. There's a money-related fix for this, but the NCAA would never do it.

The fix is: Change the distribution of March Madness money to reward conferences much more for having teams that win games in the tournament.

As it is, each tournament unit this year will be about $275,000. So change that. Make it $100,000 for each team that just makes the tournament but doesn't survive to the first Saturday/Sunday, and bump it up to $600,000 for each team that wins on the first Thursday/Friday. That's a $500,000 carrot to dangle in front of a conference as an incentive to make sure it's not giving its autobid to a lousy team that just got lucky for 3 games in the conference tournament.

They already reward teams for winning games by getting a credit for each round they get to up until the Final Four. Unequal distribution will lead to the downfall of the tournament.

(03-07-2019 01:32 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  If you lose 15 or more games you are not eligible for the tournament.

I like this. If conference champ has less than .500 record than autobid goes to regular season champion.

Also, back to 64.

(03-08-2019 06:08 PM)BcatMatt13 Wrote:  The regular season champ should get the auto bid. I don't understand why small conferences don't do this to ensure their best team gets in the tournament. I guess it's a money thing.

Theoretically, a team could lose every single game during the season and still win the national championship. That shouldn't be possible.

Just asking, do the conference tournaments for these (expletive) conferences really make more money than their #1 seed winning a 1st Round game?