March Sadness: How to Fix the NCAA Tournament

By now, college basketball fans have chosen sides on whether this year's trend of upsets is a result of parity in the game or just certain teams getting hot at the right time.

With the latest Goliath (#1 seeded Kansas) going down at the hands of something called Virginia Commonwealth University, the detractors will complain that a lack of  marquee teams in the Final Four makes it unwatchable for the common NCAA hoops fan.

In addition, media pundits like ESPN's Skip Bayless still contend that VCU didn't even deserve an at-large bid to the dance because of their poor regular season finish (lost four of their last five contests).

An earlier jab at VCU was just a joke by this writer.  Make no mistake, though considered a mid-major, VCU has earned their stripes, having done their "Dougie" at the Big Dance during past seasons.

A 2007 Rams outfit, led by future pro Eric Maynor, knocked off Duke in a first round tournament upset.   As well, stalking the sidelines at the Richmond school has become a launch pad for coaches looking to obtain jobs at major level schools.  A young Jeff Capel stewarded VCU before earning a job at Oklahoma, followed by former Florida assistant, Anthony Grant, who's now the top guy at Alabama.

After this performance, big-named schools will be standing on line for a chance to lure coach Shaka Smart away from VCU. 

Anyone who's grown close to college basketball knows that reputation plays a big part in which teams get invited to the tournament.  Some years when a big school doesn't quite have a glossy record, past performance is used as a factor to punch their ticket.

In most years, a school like Duke, Kentucky, even Gonzaga, with maybe 19 wins will fair better in the dance than a mid-major with no national tournament pedigree.  Those aforementioned teams, who play in major conferences, are battle tested and that matters to the selection committee. 

People like Skip Bayless have to realize and accept that VCU has arrived as one of the programs that gets this special treatment.  Yes, they faltered late in the season, but they've proved on the floor that they belong.

Following the VCU/Kansas game, sports writer Jason Whitlock tweeted something to the effect that the basketball regular season is meaningless and that the college football BCS is a great idea.

Though largely impossible for this writer to agree with Whitlock, he was onto something with his statement about the regular season. 

Here's a simple idea to clean up the selection process and make for a more balanced experience.  Of course, no school "on the bubble" or diehard fan will ever be totally satisfied, but this would aid towards closing the gap:

• Award automatic bids to the winners of the conference regular season.  There are 32 Division 1 basketball conferences.  Any team that wins its league has proven its worth over opponents within the conference.  The Ivy League has no conference tournament, thus the league champ gets its only bid. The bigger conferences see league tournaments as money makers so cash has become king.   It's not fair to penalize a school who got it done for five months, then loses in the league tournament, by keeping them out of the dance. Example: St. Mary's.  The Gaels won a share of the WCC title for the first time in 14 years but lost the the league tournament final to Gonzaga and were left out of the NCAAs.  

• Award automatic bids to the winners of the conference tournament.  The NCAA currently does this and it's a good idea.  If a team strings together four or five wins and takes the championship, they might be able to carry that momentum into the Big Dance and go a few rounds deep.  This also benefits teams who are strong traditionally, but fail to win the regular season maybe due to player injuries or being unable to gel early.  Some teams don't hit their stride until after the New Year and it's more important to be playing your best ball later in the season.  Example: Hampton. Sharing second place in the MEAC, the Pirates sailed to a league tournament title and the automatic birth, leaving the regular season champs, Bethune-Cookman, out to dry.  

Again, with 32 conferences, inviting all the regular season champs gives the NCAA roughly half of the field. By awarding bids to the conference tournament winners, assuming there are no repeats, that equals 64.  2011 saw the addition of three teams, upping the total to 68 (they added a play-in game including a 65th participant in 2001). The remaining four slots would be picked by the current methods of RPI and strength of schedule, etc. This method would also be used if there are no repeat winners to fill all empty slots in the field of 68. 

An immediate criticism to this idea is, "What about the power conferences like the Big East?" They have up to 11 teams worthy of getting into the tournament during any given season, such as this year.

The response: Either you want a true tournament of champions or you don't.  True, this idea would certainly eliminate some teams with marquee names who might finish anywhere from 2nd through 10th in a tough league.  On the flipside, gone would be the complaints of favoritism and the criticism of a largely arbitrary selection process that currently exists.

All of the favorite schools would not be included but the means by which teams were selected would make much more sense, adding some needed integrity to the process.  Awarding bids to teams who had actually played their way in would save everyone the trouble of watching selection committee chair Gene Smith try to explain how Virginia Tech and Colorado missed the cut. 

In the end, many players, coaches and fans would be upset by being left on the doorstep, but at least this way they could understand why.