Thanks for all of the responses to last Thursday\u2019s brain teaser. What bothers me is this \u2013 the NCAA instructs committee members to select the 34 best<\/u><\/p>\n
at-large teams. (It says so right here<\/a>!) Yet the method currently used doesn\u2019t accomplish that. And if the tournament were invented today, I\u2019m fairly sure we\u2019d devise a more intelligent way to select the field. <\/p>\n Let\u2019s take an example from the latest brackets posted yesterday. If you haven\u2019t familiarized yourself with the national bracket<\/a>, you should do so. It essentially neutralizes the bias or errors of any one bracketeer and gives you a consensus look at who\u2019s in and who\u2019s out. Currently, our country\u2019s bracketologists view Charlotte and Utah State as essentially equivalent teams. For full disclosure, I have not seen Charlotte play this season and I love Bobby Lutz, but they better have some serious extenuating circumstances, because any objective method you use would indicate the Aggies are the better \u2013 and a significantly better \u2013 team. <\/p>\n I shouldn\u2019t say any<\/i> objective method, because clearly people are using an objective method to fill a bracket \u2013 some sort of bastardization of the RPI. I think everyone would agree (though I\u2019ll hear from Charlotte fans!) that we need some sort of objective input into a process that has to sort out so many teams. And I\u2019m not here to sell you on my system right now, although I think it\u2019s awesome. But you should check out Kenneth Massey\u2019s compendium of rankings<\/a> for a complete list of options. As I write this, there are 36 systems listed on his page. This will grow by a few in the next day, but right now 35 of them have Utah State ranked higher than Charlotte. The one that has Charlotte higher, has them higher by a single spot. <\/p>\n Now sure, there may be other circumstances to consider, mainly injuries, but in the absence of that, why would you override this vast collection of data and make any case at all that the better team should be out (if they lose in their conference tourney, which is possible)? You might say \u201cquality wins\u201d, \u201cgood losses\u201d, \u201croad wins\u201d or \u201cstrength of schedule\u201d, but don\u2019t all of these formulas take that into account to some extent?<\/p>\n Just as you wouldn\u2019t want one person to be responsible for selecting and seeding the field, you wouldn\u2019t want one poll, or even one method to be used by committee members. Maybe with a switch to 96 teams, we\u2019ll have a system that can also better identify which teams are truly the best. <\/p>\n If you\u2019ve read my work over the years, you\u2019ve noticed that I rarely use the term \u201cmid-major\u201d. It doesn\u2019t interest me to label subsets of the college hoops universe. I don\u2019t begrudge those who arrive at their interest in the game from cheering on \u201cmid-majors\u201d. But if you do, wouldn\u2019t you want your best and brightest represented come tourney time? Certainly, Charlotte could take down a 5-seed. A win at Louisville basically proves that. But this isn\u2019t about which teams can<\/i> win a game. (If that were so, Green Bay would be on the board by virtue of their win<\/p>\n over Wisconsin. Clearly, performance over the rest of the season matters.) It\u2019s about picking the best teams. And Old Dominion or Saint Mary\u2019s or Utah State would be more likely to pull off a tourney win (or two). <\/p>\n And if you don\u2019t care about which conferences get how many bids, wouldn\u2019t you rather have a balanced bracket? There\u2019s no need to give one 5-seed a relative break. It\u2019s not fair to the other 5-seeds in the tourney. <\/p>\nat<\/strike><\/p>\n