Just yesterday, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany confirmed that the NCAA is going to expand the NCAA basketball tournament field to 96 teams.  While this should come as no shock to anyone, given the long history of the NCAA trying to whore out the tournament and their amateur athletes to make as much money as possible.  And with negotiations coming up for the new TV contract, they feel as if they have to find additional streams of revenue in the tournament to ramp up the bidding.

Let me first admit that the idea that I am about to propose is not entirely mine.  Doug Gottlieb of ESPN is the first person I have heard mention something like this – I just decided to take it to the level of applying the theory to this year’s teams.

So, here is the system I am proposing.  While there is no counterargument as to why this would be better than a 96-team field, comments are always welcome. 

- There are 8 additional teams, and 8 additional games, in the tournament.

- These 8 additional games will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday of the first week of the tournament.

- Here is how you get those 8 teams:

   – Rank order all of the teams

   – Add all 31 automatic bids into the field

   – Add the top 25 at-large teams that do not already have a bid. That takes you to 56 teams

   – Now, take the next 16 teams and have them play each other for the 10 and 11 seeds

So, let’s take a look at what that would have meant this year.  I am going to essentially take the “last 8 in” and “first 8 out” from my database over at RPIbracket.com.  Let’s see what those 8 games would have looked like this year.  Before I start, let me just say that there are some VERY juicy matchups in there.  It is by accident.  I seriously took the last 8 teams in and first 8 teams out, and make one round of games, with the top team on that list playing the bottom team, the second team playing the second from the bottom, etc.

Tuesday

Arizona State at Virginia Tech

Florida at Tennessee

Dayton at Notre Dame

South Florida at Cincinnati

Wednesday

Memphis at Georgia Tech

Ole Miss at UTEP

Louisville at Utah State

Minnesota at Illinois

So, do you think anyone would rather watch that slate of games, or watch the 32 games between teams 33-96?

There is one glitch in my system, but it’s an easy one to fix. The glitch is that, on the surface, a major network would never pay more money for an extra 8 games than they would for an extra 32 games.  The way around that is to split out the first round of play-in games as its own package.

Think about it.  Let the big networks get into a bidding war over the main tournament, and let the niche networks (ESPN, FOX Sports, Versus) get into a bidding war over the 8 play-in games.  The networks don’t want to mess up their Tuesday and Wednesday schedules anyway…but do you think ESPN would want to pay a lot of money to essentially get two nights of tournament basketball, with 16 teams taking part, almost all of them from the power conferences? That was a rhetorical question.

While you could make the same argument about splitting the bidding for the tournament coverage into two packages using the 96-team approach, I am not sure that it would have the same allure for the network or make the same amount of money for the NCAA.  Let’s assume that ESPN is going to win that bidding war.  Do you think they would pay more money for 32 games, 2 or 3 of which might be compelling, or 8 games that would have a pretty good chance of being compelling games matching big name programs every year?

I guess this is another one of those things we will have to put on the ever-expanding “if I were in charge, things would be different” list.

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Well, the official NCAA Tournament Bracket is out, and let me just tell you that it is really a good one this year.  And when I say good, I mean that it’s really a piece of crap just like every other bracket that the selection committee has put out over the years. 

At the risk of losing my press credential for the final in Indy, I have to just tell it like it is.  This is an amateur basketball tournament – most people tend to forget that, but it’s true – and the selection committee continues to conduct themselves in such a manner to make the most money possible out of the tournament. 

Let’s forget for a minute that the tournament is essentially a huge money grab by the largely white establishment, made possible by their pimping out the players, who are largely young men of color.  Sorry to my white brethren, but it’s true.  Everyone knows how wrong it is, and everyone is afraid to write or talk about it it.  Well, everyone but me.  I think I will have to dust off the keyboard some time this week for that column, but since the actions of the buffoons on the selection committee are still hanging in the air like an unclaimed fart, let’s start with them.

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College hoops fans – if you wanted another reason to hate A-Fraud, how about this?

Anyway, a more appropriate title for this column might be “Why Our Bracket is the Best”, but that would be a little bit self-serving, even for us.

As always, things are subject to change as the rest of the season and conference tourneys play out, but let’s take a look at the tourney teams from the Big Ten, in the most popular bracket out there (Joe Lunardi from ESPN) and the soon-to-be-not-quite-as-unpopular-as-it-is-now bracket over at RPIBracket.com.

No mud slinging here – I love Lunardi and the service he provides.  In fact, the only problem I have with Joe, and all bracketologists for that matter, is that they are judged by how well they predict the actions of the selection committee, a body that is under express orders to generate as much revenue for the NCAA and its member schools as possible. 

So, let’s just take a look at one of the major conferences in Lunardi’s bracket and my bracket, just to see what makes the selection committee (and therefore all bracketologists) tick.  First, the overall stats for the conference as a whole.

I am not sure if there is anything telling there or not, except for the fact that Lunardi has one too many teams in the tournament.  Forget that the team I am about to describe is from a BCS conference for one second, and tell me – does the team described below look like it should be treated as one of the 34 most deserving and at-large-bid–worthy teams in the country?

Record:  18-12

RPI: 73

SOS: 47

Wins Against RPI Top 50: 4

Losses Against RPI Top 51-100: 2

Losses Against RPI Top 101-200: 3

Obviously, the answer is a resounding NO.  Does anyone out there really think that a team with 3 losses against teams that are not in the Top 100 RPI deserves an at-large bid?  Well, I have news for you, my friends – there are going to be at least 2 or 3 teams that meet that criteria in the field of 65 this year, and every single one of them is going to be from a BCS conference.

So, what should we tackle next?  I guess we can start with the team we just discussed briefly above – Illinois.  An absolutely atrocious resume to be getting an at-large bid, and Lunardi has them as a 10 seed.  I am not saying he is wrong, I am just saying that the data does not support the worthiness of Illinois to participate this year.

Not sure how this will play out, but let’s take a look at the 4 teams we share in common.  I think we will find that the only thing that should REALLY matter, the STATS, are on the side of our bracket.  But, the STATS do not line the pockets of the NCAA – the only things that do that are TV revenue and conference bias and east coast bias and juicy matchups and fans travelling to see their teams and spending all kinds of cash – something that the fans of BCS conference teams do very well.  So, without further ado, here we go.

Purdue.  I am shocked by this one, but our bracket actually matches Lunardi here…although I suspect it is because the stats have not caught up with the Boilermakers yet.  If they lose the season finale and do not make enough noise in the Big Ten tourney, I think their drop will be much more precipitous in our bracket than the ones designed around bracketology, or parroting the selection committee, or making money above all else – however you want to look at it.

Ohio State.  First of all, let’s start by saying that it is absolutely hilarious that Ohio State is ranked in the top 10 in both polls.  They have 3 losses against teams with an RPI over 50, one of those against a team with an RPI over 100.  Top 10 teams in the country should not ever lose to a team with an RPI over 100, whether Evan Turner is hurt or not.  We have them right where they belong in our bracket, as a 6 seed, not a 3 seed like they are in everyone else’s bracket.  Then again, we do not subscribe to the moronic practice of running an amateur basketball tournament based on making the largest amount of money possible. 

Suffice it to say, we have 100% confidence that as soon as Ohio State plays a team in the bracket with a seed number lower than 6, Thad Matta will be sitting on his yearly long plane ride…right where he belongs.  Speaking of things about this team that are hilarious – Thad Matta makes $2.5 million per year and his contract does not expire until 2016.  Really, we looked it up.  Besides, the dude looks like this. While we are making fun of A.D.s that give all this money to coaches who almost ALWAYS get bounced out of the tournament by a team inferior to their team, did you know that Rick Barnes also makes over $2 million per year?  It’s true.

Michigan State.  This is the most egregious error by Lunardi and presumably the selection committee.  But the real travesty is that Tom Izzo will make the selection committee look like they know what the hell they are talking about…which they do not.  MSU will end up with a 4 seed, just like they have right now, and they will win their pod and then take the #1 seed in their bracket right to the wire before dropping out of the tournament.  That is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that Michigan State has 3 losses against teams with an RPI > 50, and their own RPI is only 26. 

Based on our algorithm, we have them as a 9 seed.  That would have them (assuming a first-round win) playing the #1 seed in their region 1 game earlier than if they were to receive a 4 seed.  I hope the university enjoys the gift from the selection committee of providing them with whatever revenue they can take from that extra game.

Wisconsin.  Go figure that the team with the second-best RPI in the conference, and the best SOS in the conference, is the team with the fourth-worst seed in the mainstream brackets.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the three teams with better seeds have vastly more revenue generating potential for the NCAA.  Well, over at RPIBracket.com, where we let the data do the talking, Wisconsin is indeed the Big Ten team with the second-best seed.  Kind of funny how that works out, huh?

Anyway, that’s just a very quick and dirty breakdown of what our current bracket looks like for the Big Ten and how it differs from the mainstream brackets and how it will differ from what the selection committee does this year.  But we absolutely refuse to waver from our promise that we will continue to reward teams with higher seeds in our bracket based strictly on the data and nothing else.

Please feel free to check out our site.  Not only do we have our current bracket out there at any given time, we also have some more information about our process and how it works.  Some of the reading is a little tough, as there is a technical geeky section, but it is pretty easy to see that our bracket, though inaccurate from the standpoint of being able to predict what will happen with the selection committee, is almost certainly a much better approach.

Besides, why would you want to pattern your analysis after a group of people whose sole mission is to squeeze every dime they can out of an amateur basketball tournament?

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Well, it’s finally happened – we have gotten the 2010 version of the RPI bracket up and running.  For a few reasons, all kind of geeky, we hit a couple of snags.

Then, the first version of the bracket had a couple of significant anomalies in it.  Since it is only our second year, and probably only about the 25th time that we generated the bracket, we didn’t mind taking a quick look at the algorithm to see what we could see.  In case you are interested, we made a slight tweak to it.

So, we are once again poised to (hopefully) help college basketball fans see exactly how the selection committee screws over teams from the non-BCS conferences.  I know, I know – big surprise.  Everyone knows that it is going on, so what’s the point?

Well, the point is that we can, with our proprietary algorithm and bracket, not only quantify the level of the screw-job, but we can tell exactly which teams, based solely on the data, got screwed over…and by how much.

We have a high level of confidence in our algorithm, and the key metric that it spits out for all 347 teams in Division I, the Tournament Index (T.I.).  It is a completely objective jumping-off point for comparisons between and among teams. 

As mentioned on the RPIBracket.com site, there is no room for any bias whatsoever – no big conference bias, no program tradition bias, no revenue generation potential bias, etc. – just the data.  And we don’t just do that for tourney qualification, we do that for seeding as well.  For instance, if you look in our current bracket, you will see that Michigan State is a 10 seed, despite being ranked #14 in the polls.  This is because MSU has lost 2 games against teams ranked 51-100 in the RPI, and their February record was 2-4.  Those happen to be 2 things that our algorithm does not like.  Plus, the Big Ten is not very strong this year compared to other conferences…so you have Ohio State with a 5 seed in our bracket, even though they are a Top 10 team, according to the polls.

While it is a great bonus that there are 2 Big Ten teams that our bracket is not giving respect, that was not our intention.  Besides, there is risk with any system.  For instance, Tom Izzo is capable of elevating his team way beyond what they should be capable of.  Thad Matta, on the other hand, is capable of losing a first round game in the tournament to a grossly inferior team.  Seriously, he is a contender for this year’s Rick Barnes award…although with Barnes himself in the mix, it is tough to see someone else stepping up (down?) and “coaching” their team to an early exit with the same level of proficiency exhibited on a year-in, year-out basis by Rick Barnes.

At any rate, the 2010 version is now live.  It is not perfect, but please feel free to check it out and chime in.  Based on the information in the algorithm, it’s definitely a good basis for comparing two teams, and I am more than happy to share the generalities of the data, if not the algorithm itself.  Also, unlike anyone that calls themselves a bracketologist, I am receptive to criticism and have even tweaked the algorithm in the past based on clearly presented arguments from readers and fans.

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Now that the selection committee has done their job and set the field of 65, it’s time to take an objective look at what they messed up.  All of this analysis is based on our bracket, which is based strictly on the data and our proprietary algorithm, and can be found at RPIBracket.com.  While we have always prided ourselves on the fact that our bracket was significantly different than the bracketologists, our algorithm got 61 out of 65 teams correct.  What that means to us is that our algorithm is good enough to serve as the basis for any arguments we are about to make in this post.

First of all, let’s look at the snubs and gifts, in terms of who got in and who did not get in.  The 4 teams that we have different than the selection committee:  Creighton, St. Mary’s, San Diego State, and Niagara.  The 4 teams that the selection committee put in the tournament instead:  Boston College, Maryland, Michigan, and Arizona.  Hmmmm – I think it’s time to start the “Money Grubbing” argument.  Do you notice anything about the 4 teams on those lists?  All 4 teams that we “missed on” are not from the BCS conferences, and all 4 teams the selection committee put in there are from the BCS conferences.  Don’t worry – the argument will get even stronger when we look at the seedings in our bracket (once again, based on the DATA and nothing else) vs. the bracket that the selection committee came up with.

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Well, all of the results are in, and we have our final bracket up at RPIBracket.com.  As for myself, I can’t wait to see how different the bracket is from the selection committee’s bracket…as any of you that have been following this throughout the whole process knows that matching the selection committee would be an admission that our algorithm is completely flawed.  Or, I guess you could look at it the other way and say that if we end up with 62 or 63 matches, this year’s committee put together a fair bracket.

I know there are going to be lots of seeding differences between the selection committee and our bracket, but that is because, as we have been saying over and over for the past several weeks, our bracket is based on the data nothing else – no major conference bias or revenue chasing like the selection committee. 

A couple of items of note:

• We are not, under any circumstances, believing the hype with Louisville.  They managed to make it through the entire Big East season without having to play a Top 4 conference team on the road, and they skated through the Big East tournament with the easiest road possible.  Their Big East tournament win vaulted them for a 3 seed to a 2 seed in our bracket.
• Memphis is not a 1 seed, and never has been in our bracket.  They just have not played enough elite teams to get a read on them through the data…and the data tells us that they are a 2 seed.
• Here are the 1 seeds in our bracket:  Pittsburgh, UConn, North Carolina, and Michigan State.  We are not only VERY confident that these are the correct 1 seeds, we maintain that anyone who puts Louisville or Memphis into a 1 seed is not paying attention to the facts.
• Mid-Majors with Multiple Bids.  You may see some of this from the selection committee later today, but probably not quite this much.  Here are the mid-major conferences that have multiple bids in our bracket:  Atlantic-10 (3 bids), Horizon League (2 bids), Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (2 bids), Missouri Valley Conference (2 bids), West Coast Conference (2 bids)…that’s right, we have St. Mary’s AND Creighton in our bracket.  The selection committee may follow suit there…but we also have Niagara in there as well.  Based strictly on the data, their resume was just too strong.

So, there are the main points for today.  The Mack household is on quarantine with the flu right now, so I will leave any additional analysis for you to do on your own.  I may have some time later to break down the differences between our bracket and the selection committee and, of course, use something silly like the facts to back up my argument.

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