(03-06-2024 12:12 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 07:51 PM)C2__ Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 12:24 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 12:14 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 12:00 PM)Eichorst Wrote:  Previously, the P5+Big East had less power and were not able to pull that off. But maybe now, with the threat of a breakaway, they can finally push the play-in games to a half share and only for seeds 15-18.

I don’t think they’ll just have all of the lowest seeds in the play-in round. It’s not that the power conferences are being altruistic, but rather the only way expansion works is for the TV networks to pay more money and the only way that they’re paying more money is for power conference at-large teams to be involved in the play-in round.

I’m a little confused as to why 76 teams would be an option, but not 80. It seems like it should either be 72 or 80 if there’s expansion (as that would be an equal distribution of additional bids in each region). 76 seems like a weird figure that sounds like a “compromise” but has the same structural issues as going to 80. At least 72 is a straight-forward extension of what exists for 2 regions and applies it to all 4 regions in the bracket. (Of course, the powers that be in college sports seem to love weird compromises, as evidenced by the CFP expansion discussion.)

80 is adding 12 more teams and most of those last 4 would probably be from 1 bid conferences or teams with losing records. Just because 76 divided by 4 is a prime number doesn’t make it a problem. You’ve got 12 games that can be done either 3 or 4 a day

I'm guessing you mean teams with a losing record in conference. It's against the rules for a team with a losing overall record to be selected for the NCAA Tournament.

If we added 12, they might have to include P6 teams with overall losing records.
Rules can be changed just as the number of bids can be.

ehh, I don't think they would. I mean looking at bracketville site- the first 17 teams out, there are 13 P6 teams in there and none of them are close to a losing record.

(03-05-2024 07:57 PM)C2__ Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 01:11 PM)IWantToTalkToRalphSampson Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 10:32 AM)GoBuckeyes1047 Wrote:  Wild idea, well the 1st part isn't, but 2nd part is.

1st part: reasonable enough
36 autobids and 36 at-large. P4 get 2 autobids.

2nd part: radical, won't happen
Regular season champ gets the 1 autobid. Conference tournament winner gets the other. In the case for the B1G, RS champ can play/host the 2 teams that miss the conference tourney as exhibition games to keep players fresh and give other players some playing time in the event of injuries during the NCAA Tourney (not required to play exhibition games) while 2-16 would participate in 15 team conference tourney for the 2nd autobid.

More likely, P4 conference tourneys would get split in 2 (maintaining ladder bracket) by either:
- conference standings
(1-4)-(5-8)-(9-12)-(13-16?)-17?-20?
(2-3)-(6-7)-(10-11)-(14-15)-18?-19?
or
- geography/pods (maybe played in 2 cities, but can still fit in 1 city for up to 5 days) with the 2 winners earning the autobids. The 2 winners can play each other for the championship, but not required.

But in every conference the "regular season champion" is not the actual conference champion; the conference champion is the winner of the conference tournament. It seems like you'd be penalizing the best regular season team by not letting them participate in the conference tournament and thereby actually win the league, even with the exhibition games, simply to ensure that the team with the best regular season record doesn't also win the conference tourney. Plus, 1-bid leagues are a thing and the regular season champs of those leagues get into the NIT if they don't win the conference tourneys. Likewise, the P4, to the extent there is such a thing in college basketball, don't need more than one autobid. The Big East, ACC, SEC, Big XII and probably the B1G will get multiple at large bids annually anyway.

I'm sure you missed the memo of change for the NIT, that now grants automatic bids to multiple P6 teams to counteract the proposed Fox postseason tournament.

I'm also sure someone beat me to this correction, so I'm sure you know this point by now. In the words of the Notorious B.I.G. "if you don't know, now ya know."

I had forgotten about that, but the NIT hasn't mattered for half a century, nor will Fox's non-event tournament. I'm sure the ESPN added the NIT autobids for power teams to fill out weekday inventory in the late March time slots where they air those games for ratings, but the NCAA/Turner/CBS can do that for the actual tournament by just selecting power league teams at large, not by guaranteeing those leagues more than one slot. I know the American wouldn't be a part of this proposed 2 autobids, 1 for regular season champ, 1 for tourney champ scenario, but looking at it this year is instructive. South Florida just won the AAC regular season title, but they have virtually zero shot at making the tournament unless they win the conference tourney given their abysmal strength of schedule. In a conference that is actually good at basketball, the regular season champion will invariably be picked as at large if they don't win the conference tournament, so you don't need to guarantee them a slot and thereby potentially reward a power conference school for playing an indefensibly weak OOC schedule.

(03-05-2024 08:32 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 08:12 AM)RustonBulldog Wrote:  So expand just enough to let in a few more undeserving cartel schools

I for one am shocked

Pardon me, sir, but your bias is showing. I know this because of two key words: undeserving and cartel. I get it. Your favorite team has not yet earned a spot in one of the conferences which have vastly greater resources than your own.

I'm not sure how you define "deserving", but I suspect you believe that any conference champion, no matter how strong or weak their team is, is "deserving". There is a reason why every conference champion is invited to the tournament, but it isn't because they are deserving. They are invited for largely political reasons, and because they bring a small number of additional eyeballs to the tournament.

For those reasons, the more powerful and well-resourced conferences have traditionally subsidized the weaker and poorer ones. That subsidy isn't an obligation or a duty. So to ask them to increase their subsidy may be asking too much. Just sayin'.

So I guess a team that can't finish in the top half of it's conference, or have a winning conference record is more "deserving" of an at-large to play for a national title than a team that those schools won't schedule, won it's regular season race and was upset by a regional rival in the tournament.

By your logic, the following teams did not deserve to be there, but still won a tournament game in the 64 team era:
Cleveland St and Little Rock in 1986,
Austin Peay in 1987,
Murray St in 1988,
Siena in 1989,
Northern Iowa in 1990,
Xavier and Richmond in 1991,
East Tennessee St in 1992,
Santa Clara in 1993,
Old Dominion and Weber State in 1995,
Chattanooga and Coppin State in 1997,
Richmond in 1998,
Weber again in 1999,
Hampton in 2001,
Bucknell in 2005,
Northwestern State in 2006,
Ohio in 2010,
Lehigh and Norfolk State in 2012,
Harvard and Florida Gulf Coast in 2013,
Mercer in 2014,
Georgia State and UAB in 2015,
Middle Tennesee State and Stephen F. Austin in 2016,
UMBC in 2018,
no tourney in 2020,
Abilene Christian and Oral Roberts in 2021,
St. Peter's in 2022 and
Princeton and Fairleigh Dickinson in 2023.

38 tournaments since it expanded to 64. 25 have experienced a 14 seed or higher win at least one game (2/3). 10 had more than one upset (1/4). That's to say nothing of the 13 seed upsets (32 times) or the 12 (53).

P5's are overrated. Period. They play easy teams in non-conference, play one or two roads games at the most (some played none this year) in that span, get rated, then beat each other in non-conference and say, well, they lost to another ranked team.

When a non-P5 schools loses to a regional rival in the conference tourney, people like you say they don't belong. When UNC loses to Wake, people like you apologize for the loss and say, well, they are rivals and Wake got up for them. When schools started figuring out how to game the system with RPI, they changed it to the NET. Now they changed the NIT berth to middling P5's and few are gonna want to watch.

People like watching Fairleigh Dickinson beat Purdue (except Purdue fans). Few care about watching UNC or Kentucky beat the other on a grand scale. I saw more excitement when I was in Vegas for San Diego State versus Florida Atlantic than I have for any other Final Four game.

Plain, hypocritical fact is that if James Madison (27-3), Grand Canyon (25-4) or Indiana State (25-5) don't win their conference tournament, they are out. Yet your school(s) is too chicken to schedule them and certainly would never play at their place. It is a rigged system from the start and continues to get worse.

(03-06-2024 01:15 PM)IWantToTalkToRalphSampson Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 07:57 PM)C2__ Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 01:11 PM)IWantToTalkToRalphSampson Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 10:32 AM)GoBuckeyes1047 Wrote:  Wild idea, well the 1st part isn't, but 2nd part is.

1st part: reasonable enough
36 autobids and 36 at-large. P4 get 2 autobids.

2nd part: radical, won't happen
Regular season champ gets the 1 autobid. Conference tournament winner gets the other. In the case for the B1G, RS champ can play/host the 2 teams that miss the conference tourney as exhibition games to keep players fresh and give other players some playing time in the event of injuries during the NCAA Tourney (not required to play exhibition games) while 2-16 would participate in 15 team conference tourney for the 2nd autobid.

More likely, P4 conference tourneys would get split in 2 (maintaining ladder bracket) by either:
- conference standings
(1-4)-(5-8)-(9-12)-(13-16?)-17?-20?
(2-3)-(6-7)-(10-11)-(14-15)-18?-19?
or
- geography/pods (maybe played in 2 cities, but can still fit in 1 city for up to 5 days) with the 2 winners earning the autobids. The 2 winners can play each other for the championship, but not required.

But in every conference the "regular season champion" is not the actual conference champion; the conference champion is the winner of the conference tournament. It seems like you'd be penalizing the best regular season team by not letting them participate in the conference tournament and thereby actually win the league, even with the exhibition games, simply to ensure that the team with the best regular season record doesn't also win the conference tourney. Plus, 1-bid leagues are a thing and the regular season champs of those leagues get into the NIT if they don't win the conference tourneys. Likewise, the P4, to the extent there is such a thing in college basketball, don't need more than one autobid. The Big East, ACC, SEC, Big XII and probably the B1G will get multiple at large bids annually anyway.

I'm sure you missed the memo of change for the NIT, that now grants automatic bids to multiple P6 teams to counteract the proposed Fox postseason tournament.

I'm also sure someone beat me to this correction, so I'm sure you know this point by now. In the words of the Notorious B.I.G. "if you don't know, now ya know."

I had forgotten about that, but the NIT hasn't mattered for half a century, nor will Fox's non-event tournament. I'm sure the ESPN added the NIT autobids for power teams to fill out weekday inventory in the late March time slots where they air those games for ratings, but the NCAA/Turner/CBS can do that for the actual tournament by just selecting power league teams at large, not by guaranteeing those leagues more than one slot. I know the American wouldn't be a part of this proposed 2 autobids, 1 for regular season champ, 1 for tourney champ scenario, but looking at it this year is instructive. South Florida just won the AAC regular season title, but they have virtually zero shot at making the tournament unless they win the conference tourney given their abysmal strength of schedule. In a conference that is actually good at basketball, the regular season champion will invariably be picked as at large if they don't win the conference tournament, so you don't need to guarantee them a slot and thereby potentially reward a power conference school for playing an indefensibly weak OOC schedule.

And how do you define that? That's the rub. There's no doubt the Big 12 is good. But their collective non-conference schedule is atrocious, so they aren't labeled the best based on who they beat.

I think the 14 Big 12 teams played the ACC 13 times and won only four of those games.

Problem is the metrics are flawed and there's no right answer. Inevitably, it ends with who the networks, not who earned.

(03-06-2024 08:05 PM)FoUTASportscaster Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 08:32 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 08:12 AM)RustonBulldog Wrote:  So expand just enough to let in a few more undeserving cartel schools

I for one am shocked

Pardon me, sir, but your bias is showing. I know this because of two key words: undeserving and cartel. I get it. Your favorite team has not yet earned a spot in one of the conferences which have vastly greater resources than your own.

I'm not sure how you define "deserving", but I suspect you believe that any conference champion, no matter how strong or weak their team is, is "deserving". There is a reason why every conference champion is invited to the tournament, but it isn't because they are deserving. They are invited for largely political reasons, and because they bring a small number of additional eyeballs to the tournament.

For those reasons, the more powerful and well-resourced conferences have traditionally subsidized the weaker and poorer ones. That subsidy isn't an obligation or a duty. So to ask them to increase their subsidy may be asking too much. Just sayin'.

So I guess a team that can't finish in the top half of it's conference, or have a winning conference record is more "deserving" of an at-large to play for a national title than a team that those schools won't schedule, won it's regular season race and was upset by a regional rival in the tournament.

By your logic, the following teams did not deserve to be there, but still won a tournament game in the 64 team era:
Cleveland St and Little Rock in 1986,
Austin Peay in 1987,
Murray St in 1988,
Siena in 1989,
Northern Iowa in 1990,
Xavier and Richmond in 1991,
East Tennessee St in 1992,
Santa Clara in 1993,
Old Dominion and Weber State in 1995,
Chattanooga and Coppin State in 1997,
Richmond in 1998,
Weber again in 1999,
Hampton in 2001,
Bucknell in 2005,
Northwestern State in 2006,
Ohio in 2010,
Lehigh and Norfolk State in 2012,
Harvard and Florida Gulf Coast in 2013,
Mercer in 2014,
Georgia State and UAB in 2015,
Middle Tennesee State and Stephen F. Austin in 2016,
UMBC in 2018,
no tourney in 2020,
Abilene Christian and Oral Roberts in 2021,
St. Peter's in 2022 and
Princeton and Fairleigh Dickinson in 2023.

38 tournaments since it expanded to 64. 25 have experienced a 14 seed or higher win at least one game (2/3). 10 had more than one upset (1/4). That's to say nothing of the 13 seed upsets (32 times) or the 12 (53).

P5's are overrated. Period. They play easy teams in non-conference, play one or two roads games at the most (some played none this year) in that span, get rated, then beat each other in non-conference and say, well, they lost to another ranked team.

When a non-P5 schools loses to a regional rival in the conference tourney, people like you say they don't belong. When UNC loses to Wake, people like you apologize for the loss and say, well, they are rivals and Wake got up for them. When schools started figuring out how to game the system with RPI, they changed it to the NET. Now they changed the NIT berth to middling P5's and few are gonna want to watch.

People like watching Fairleigh Dickinson beat Purdue (except Purdue fans). Few care about watching UNC or Kentucky beat the other on a grand scale. I saw more excitement when I was in Vegas for San Diego State versus Florida Atlantic than I have for any other Final Four game.

Plain, hypocritical fact is that if James Madison (27-3), Grand Canyon (25-4) or Indiana State (25-5) don't win their conference tournament, they are out. Yet your school(s) is too chicken to schedule them and certainly would never play at their place. It is a rigged system from the start and continues to get worse.

I do think some regular season conference champs get the shaft on selection Sunday.

I still think he's taking it too far in the opposite direction.

(03-06-2024 08:05 PM)FoUTASportscaster Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 08:32 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 08:12 AM)RustonBulldog Wrote:  So expand just enough to let in a few more undeserving cartel schools

I for one am shocked

Pardon me, sir, but your bias is showing. I know this because of two key words: undeserving and cartel. I get it. Your favorite team has not yet earned a spot in one of the conferences which have vastly greater resources than your own.

I'm not sure how you define "deserving", but I suspect you believe that any conference champion, no matter how strong or weak their team is, is "deserving". There is a reason why every conference champion is invited to the tournament, but it isn't because they are deserving. They are invited for largely political reasons, and because they bring a small number of additional eyeballs to the tournament.

For those reasons, the more powerful and well-resourced conferences have traditionally subsidized the weaker and poorer ones. That subsidy isn't an obligation or a duty. So to ask them to increase their subsidy may be asking too much. Just sayin'.

So I guess a team that can't finish in the top half of it's conference, or have a winning conference record is more "deserving" of an at-large to play for a national title than a team that those schools won't schedule, won it's regular season race and was upset by a regional rival in the tournament.

By your logic, the following teams did not deserve to be there, but still won a tournament game in the 64 team era:
Cleveland St and Little Rock in 1986,
Austin Peay in 1987,
Murray St in 1988,
Siena in 1989,
Northern Iowa in 1990,
Xavier and Richmond in 1991,
East Tennessee St in 1992,
Santa Clara in 1993,
Old Dominion and Weber State in 1995,
Chattanooga and Coppin State in 1997,
Richmond in 1998,
Weber again in 1999,
Hampton in 2001,
Bucknell in 2005,
Northwestern State in 2006,
Ohio in 2010,
Lehigh and Norfolk State in 2012,
Harvard and Florida Gulf Coast in 2013,
Mercer in 2014,
Georgia State and UAB in 2015,
Middle Tennesee State and Stephen F. Austin in 2016,
UMBC in 2018,
no tourney in 2020,
Abilene Christian and Oral Roberts in 2021,
St. Peter's in 2022 and
Princeton and Fairleigh Dickinson in 2023.

38 tournaments since it expanded to 64. 25 have experienced a 14 seed or higher win at least one game (2/3). 10 had more than one upset (1/4). That's to say nothing of the 13 seed upsets (32 times) or the 12 (53).

P5's are overrated. Period. They play easy teams in non-conference, play one or two roads games at the most (some played none this year) in that span, get rated, then beat each other in non-conference and say, well, they lost to another ranked team.

When a non-P5 schools loses to a regional rival in the conference tourney, people like you say they don't belong. When UNC loses to Wake, people like you apologize for the loss and say, well, they are rivals and Wake got up for them. When schools started figuring out how to game the system with RPI, they changed it to the NET. Now they changed the NIT berth to middling P5's and few are gonna want to watch.

People like watching Fairleigh Dickinson beat Purdue (except Purdue fans). Few care about watching UNC or Kentucky beat the other on a grand scale. I saw more excitement when I was in Vegas for San Diego State versus Florida Atlantic than I have for any other Final Four game.

Plain, hypocritical fact is that if James Madison (27-3), Grand Canyon (25-4) or Indiana State (25-5) don't win their conference tournament, they are out. Yet your school(s) is too chicken to schedule them and certainly would never play at their place. It is a rigged system from the start and continues to get worse.

You fail to grasp what I am saying. Which is that "deserving" has nothing to do with selection. It is an irrelevant concept. The NCAA Tournament exists for its entertainment value. It is not intended to identify the "best" team, and quite often it does not do that.

To be good entertainment, it is important that any school which has even a remote chance of winning the tournament be invited. The current selection process accomplishes that. It's not about including every team which has a remote chance to win a single game in the round of 64.

Consider the conference tournaments as the ultimate play-in round. Every school has a chance to get in the tournament, and all but one of them eventually loses before a champion is crowned.

(03-06-2024 08:05 PM)FoUTASportscaster Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 08:32 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 08:12 AM)RustonBulldog Wrote:  So expand just enough to let in a few more undeserving cartel schools

I for one am shocked

Pardon me, sir, but your bias is showing. I know this because of two key words: undeserving and cartel. I get it. Your favorite team has not yet earned a spot in one of the conferences which have vastly greater resources than your own.

I'm not sure how you define "deserving", but I suspect you believe that any conference champion, no matter how strong or weak their team is, is "deserving". There is a reason why every conference champion is invited to the tournament, but it isn't because they are deserving. They are invited for largely political reasons, and because they bring a small number of additional eyeballs to the tournament.

For those reasons, the more powerful and well-resourced conferences have traditionally subsidized the weaker and poorer ones. That subsidy isn't an obligation or a duty. So to ask them to increase their subsidy may be asking too much. Just sayin'.

So I guess a team that can't finish in the top half of it's conference, or have a winning conference record is more "deserving" of an at-large to play for a national title than a team that those schools won't schedule, won it's regular season race and was upset by a regional rival in the tournament.

By your logic, the following teams did not deserve to be there, but still won a tournament game in the 64 team era:
Cleveland St and Little Rock in 1986,
Austin Peay in 1987,
Murray St in 1988,
Siena in 1989,
Northern Iowa in 1990,
Xavier and Richmond in 1991,
East Tennessee St in 1992,
Santa Clara in 1993,
Old Dominion and Weber State in 1995,
Chattanooga and Coppin State in 1997,
Richmond in 1998,
Weber again in 1999,
Hampton in 2001,
Bucknell in 2005,
Northwestern State in 2006,
Ohio in 2010,
Lehigh and Norfolk State in 2012,
Harvard and Florida Gulf Coast in 2013,
Mercer in 2014,
Georgia State and UAB in 2015,
Middle Tennesee State and Stephen F. Austin in 2016,
UMBC in 2018,
no tourney in 2020,
Abilene Christian and Oral Roberts in 2021,
St. Peter's in 2022 and
Princeton and Fairleigh Dickinson in 2023.

38 tournaments since it expanded to 64. 25 have experienced a 14 seed or higher win at least one game (2/3). 10 had more than one upset (1/4). That's to say nothing of the 13 seed upsets (32 times) or the 12 (53).

P5's are overrated. Period. They play easy teams in non-conference, play one or two roads games at the most (some played none this year) in that span, get rated, then beat each other in non-conference and say, well, they lost to another ranked team.

When a non-P5 schools loses to a regional rival in the conference tourney, people like you say they don't belong. When UNC loses to Wake, people like you apologize for the loss and say, well, they are rivals and Wake got up for them. When schools started figuring out how to game the system with RPI, they changed it to the NET. Now they changed the NIT berth to middling P5's and few are gonna want to watch.

People like watching Fairleigh Dickinson beat Purdue (except Purdue fans). Few care about watching UNC or Kentucky beat the other on a grand scale. I saw more excitement when I was in Vegas for San Diego State versus Florida Atlantic than I have for any other Final Four game.

Plain, hypocritical fact is that if James Madison (27-3), Grand Canyon (25-4) or Indiana State (25-5) don't win their conference tournament, they are out. Yet your school(s) is too chicken to schedule them and certainly would never play at their place. It is a rigged system from the start and continues to get worse.

Even as a Big Ten fan, I have no issue with each conference (large or small) having a representative in the NCAA Tournament. I’m not really bothered by the conference ranked #32 taking a spot in lieu of a mediocre power conference team.

However, the power conferences are without question subsidizing the presence of conference #32. In fact, they are subsidizing virtually everyone that’s outside of the P4 and Big East (plus a handful of schools like Gonzaga, San Diego State, Memphis, etc.). At the same time, we need to be reminded again that every conference has 100% control over who they send as an auto-bid champion. If anyone wants to send their regular season champ as the auto-bid as opposed to the conference tournament winner, then they are free to do. No one does because they want to take the conference tournament money from the TV networks instead. That’s perfectly fine, but that also means that the non-power conferences can’t complain about their regular season champs getting shafted. They have all *chosen* to take TV money over prioritizing their conference champs, so they have little standing to ask for more when they’re already getting financially subsidized by the power conferences.

(03-05-2024 08:32 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 08:12 AM)RustonBulldog Wrote:  So expand just enough to let in a few more undeserving cartel schools

I for one am shocked

Pardon me, sir, but your bias is showing. I know this because of two key words: undeserving and cartel. I get it. Your favorite team has not yet earned a spot in one of the conferences which have vastly greater resources than your own.

I'm not sure how you define "deserving", but I suspect you believe that any conference champion, no matter how strong or weak their team is, is "deserving". There is a reason why every conference champion is invited to the tournament, but it isn't because they are deserving. They are invited for largely political reasons, and because they bring a small number of additional eyeballs to the tournament.

For those reasons, the more powerful and well-resourced conferences have traditionally subsidized the weaker and poorer ones. That subsidy isn't an obligation or a duty. So to ask them to increase their subsidy may be asking too much. Just sayin'.

I'm happy to define "deserving" in pretty clear terms, for me if you aren't over .500 in your conference you don't deserve an at large bid to the tournament. I know this whole thing isn't about deserving in any way though, so don't lecture me on it you will be wasting time.