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March 14, 2005
Mania!
Would you believe it's once again time for the NCAA Tournament? I think the tournament is one of the greatest inventions in all of sports, but it still manages to piss me off to no end. I am especially upset because Buffalo's own SUNY-Buffalo Bulls got the shaft this year. However, WNY will still be represented by the Purple Eagles of Niagara, and the Canisius Golden Griffins in the women's tournament. But I digress.
The main target of my contempt is the selection committee. I am not going to get into an argument about whether the 6th-best team in the Atlantic Coast Conference is more deserving of an invite to the tournament than the second-best team in the Mid-American Conference, but rather the way they create the matchups. Every year I am constantly annoyed at how they deliberate the pairings and have to decide who gets a #1 seed instead of a #2 seed, etc.
If I had it my way, we would pick the 65 teams, have a random draw, and send them on their way. Sure, there are the odds that Duke and North Carolina could get a first round matchup, but those are the breaks. I suppose that I should be much more upset about commentators, who alternately dissect and drool over these brackets like they are characters on Sex and the City. For example, analysts are already wetting their pants over the prospect of #1 seeded Duke vs. #2 seeded Kentucky in the fourth round of the tournament. I find it unbelievable how they continue to look ahead like this despite the fact that the seedings almost never hold true. I have no statistics, but I'll bet that less than half the time the last game in any particular region features the #1 vs. the #2 seed. That, as they say, is why they play the game.
And then there's Bryant Gumbel, who during the selection show invites viewers to fill in their blank brackets as they are announced. Who in their right mind is going to fill in a bracket by hand when every single newspaper in the country has a broadsheet sized one in their sports section today? When they do get the brackets, every single Cubicle Nostradamus will fancy himself an expert on the Eastern Kentucky Colonels, and could give you fifty reasons why Wisconsin-Milwaukee will beat Alabama.
Yes, it's a special time. Soak every ounce of Billy Packer bluster up into your veins, because the college basketball season is almost over. But please, don't tell me anything more about the potential match-ups in the Sweet Sixteen.
Posted by oz115 at March 14, 2005 12:49 PM
Comments
Or expand the tournament by 1+ rounds, and invite every school in Division I. Of course, that would make irrelevant the lucrative conference tournaments, but that serves them right, given that the tournaments have already made irrelevant the conference regular season.
Oh, and it would kill off the NIT once and for all, which I doubt anybody would object to.
Posted by: Pete at March 15, 2005 08:44 AM