As the Madness begins this afternoon, two teams will be watching from their living rooms. I know, a lot of teams will be watching from their living rooms, because they didn't make the dance. However, I'm thinking of two very specific teams. Fairleigh Dickson and Southern. These two teams played Tuesday and Wednesday and fell to Florida Gulf Coast and Holy Cross respectively in the First Four.
Well, at least they got to play in a game, you say? I don't find that fair. These teams worked their tails off, were told that if they tried hard enough and won their conference tournament, they would be rewarded with a trip to the NCAA tournament. The Big Time. These two teams may not see the bright lights again for a while. They might have been fluke tournament runs. And their reward? Games on TruTV in Dayton two days before the actual tournament, just to see if they could make it.
And the response will always be, 'well if you want to make it, you gotta win the game'. And that's a valid point. But didn't they already win a game? Their conference championship? What's the point of an automatic qualifying bid if you do actually qualify? That's like saying you've automatically qualified to enter a drawing with 63 other people to win a car, but then you're told that in order to get into that drawing, you have to win a bare-knuckle brawl against some other guy first, but the other people don't. Why do those other people get to enter without getting beat up? Cause they came from better neighborhoods?
I think from now on, teams with automatic qualifying bids should AUTOMATICALLY make the field of 64. Now, will most of these teams do anything? Probably not. But at least they'd all be given a chance. This year, including automatic and play-in bids, the ACC, Big 12, Big 10, and Pac 12 were given 7 bids each. The Big East got 5. The American got 4. The Atlantic 10 and SEC each got 3. And the Missouri Valley got 2. Every other conference got just their conference tournament champ in the field. And the only teams outside of the ACC, Big 12, Big 10, Pac 12, Big East, American, Atlantic 10 and SEC to be ranked higher than a 12 are Northern Iowa, Gonzaga, and Wichita State.
So what I propose is this. There are 23 teams in the list of conferences that got single bids and one that got two. We're aren't gonna lie to ourselves here. Unless someone just has a phenomenal year, the only reason most of those schools are in there is to round out the field and because they were promised a shot. So, why not just assume they'll all be the 11-16 seeds? They almost all are now anyway. Now every team that won a conference tournament gets a real game on Thursday or Friday. And what you're left with is 4 games in Dayton on Tuesday and Wednesday made up of at-large bubble teams fighting for 10-seeds.
10-seeds tend to make a lot of trouble in the tournament. Upsetting 7's, then making 2's worried. And these are teams that were on the bubble anyway. Why not make them work harder for it. And you'll be left with more compelling games on Tuesday and Wednesday as well. No offense to these schools, but no one outside of Holy Cross, Southern, hardcore NCAA junkies, and degenerate gamblers was watching that game Wednesday evening. Wouldn't Pittsburgh-Michigan or VCU-Tulsa have been a more compelling draw? You may get more people attempting to find TruTV a few days early.
It would be good for everyone. The lower-tiered teams. The television ratings. The fans. The only ones that really suffer are teams like Temple, who got in by the skin of their teeth. But ever since they expanded the play-in games from one to four in 2011, I felt like some teams that used to get in by winning their conference tournament were getting jobbed at the expense of getting a bigger name school into the field. Syracuse has prestige, sure. But they went 19 and 14 this year. They had a self-imposed ban from the post-season last year. Before that, they hadn't missed a tournament since 2008. Seems like the committee really wanted to see the Orange make the field again.
Maybe if bubble teams want to make sure they make it into the Big Dance, they win their conference tournament and lock up that automatic qualifying bid.
