March Madness in more ways than one...

While March Madness begins tonight with the play-in game between Alabama St. and Morehead St., many are filling out their brackets, including myself which I just finished, and are trying to figure out their Final Four and tourney champ. Of all the years I have been filling them out, this year I felt was the hardest yet. The reason being is that there were no clear elite teams this season. While the Big East was by far the strongest conference, Louisville lost to WKU and Pitt faltered against Providence and in the first round of the conference tourney against WVU. If their is one year that a 1 seed will finally be upset by a 16 seed, this is the year for it happen. While this madness is getting ready to begin, the tournament committee once again had to deal with the madness of choosing who got in and who didnt to the 65 team tourney. While I feel the committee has gotten better and better each year in attempting to accurately select the best 65 teams, there are still nagging issues about the process. First and foremost, I appreciate the tourney director coming out and saying it is about a team's entire body of work throughout the season, not just the end of the regular season and the conference tournament. It means that the beginning matters just as much as the end and that your non-conference scheduling matters as well(one of the ultimate demises of PSU not getting invited). The problem I have with this though is that the winner of every conference tournament automatically gets a bid to the national tournament, regardless of their "body of work" or any other factors. From the MEAC to the SEC, the winners of the conference tournaments get an invite, all 31 of them. This certainly does not represent the committee's ideal of a complete body of work gets you in. Point and case, Baylor. Entering the Big 12 conference tournament(which all teams make by the way, no one is excluded from the conference of tournament, regardless of record), Baylor had an overall record of 17-14, and a dismal 2-11 conference record, putting them at the bottom of the Big 12. 3 wins later, 2 of them versus a struggling Nebraska and faltering Texas and one shocker vs. Kansas, Baylor found themselves in the conference final versus Mizzou, where if they would have won that game, they would have received an automatic bid to the national tourney. Now, I understand Baylor had a good run in the conference tourney and knocked off Kansas, but are you going to tell me they deserve a tourney slot based on their entire body of work. Even AFTER their improbable conference tourney run, they were only an average 20-14 overall, and still a very poor 5-11 within the conference. This also happened with the SEC where a generally average Miss. St. won the SEC and got an automatic bid, a team that would have certainly not been in the tourney if it wasnt for winning their conference tourney. This is not at all a fair and equitable process if you are using a team's entire season/body of work. In fact, it is ultracounter-intuitive in my opinion. The solution: eliminate conference tournaments. They serve no purpose other than for entertainment value. While it does allow some bubble teams a chance to gain ground in the committee's eyes, it should only be used as a small portion of the metrics used to gauge who is in and who is out. A better solution which would be more satisfying to all parties would to be eliminate the automatic bid for conference tournament winners, but still play the conference tournament. While some teams and fans may find this worthless, it gives more equity to all teams vying for seeds, from the #1 seeds to the bubbles such as Saint Mary's and PSU. If you are going to say that the criterium for getting into the NCAA tournament is a team's entire body of work throughout the season, from the non-conference schedule in November right up through March, then you can't allow the winner of a short conference tournament to receive an automatic bid. We're getting closer to getting it right. Maybe next year. Enjoy the madness.