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.

At any rate – we are about the sports and about the analysis and about trying to do a good job with it, not about generating as much traffic as possible to the site…although it would help if some of you bastards clicked on the ads once in a while!  I kid…

So, I believe I mentioned something in paragraph 1 about analysis.  So, here it goes. 

What no one is talking about right now is WHY none of these teams are in the tournament.  How on earth can 5 of the Top 10 or 15 (arguably – that is a fight for a different day) programs in the history of college basketball all be missing from the tourney in the same year?  Well, the answer is simple – coaching.  Well, I guess just throwing the word “coaching” out there is not sufficient.  Don’t worry – we will provide plenty of detail later.

Before I get deeper into this, let me just let you know that IU and Tom Crean get a free pass…for last year, for this year, and for at least one more year.  What Kelvin Sampson did to that program is just a disgrace.  Nothing more to say about that – I don’t think anyone but Kelvin Sampson’s family was surprised by what a piece of junk he turned out to be at IU.  But the fact remains that he took one of the Top 5 college basketball programs of all-time and turned it into a laughingstock.

So, let’s take a quick look at the coaching functions that are relevant here, as regards the remaining 4 programs (UNC, UConn, UCLA, Arizona) – recruiting, preparation and in-game coaching.

First, you have got to recruit guys with character.  Once you have either built (in the case of Jim Calhoun) or inherited (in the case of the other 3) a program of this stature, your ability to recruit talent is a forgone conclusion.  It comes along with the logo on the sweater.  Sure, there will be years when you do not have a “Top 5” recruiting class and years when you do…but you are always going to be able to recruit top athletes to your program.  This fact is so engrained into the consciousness of analysts that they often describe a top program’s recruiting class by using the school’s name as a descriptor.  For instance: “Ben Howland did a great job recruiting this year.  There are really some guys on that list with UCLA talent.”

The problem here is that talent and character do not go hand-in-hand.  In fact – for all of these programs, you can assume that the talent is going to be there.  You have teams of scouts bringing you film on kids and any fool can see the talent.  Your only job as a top flight college basketball coach is to recruit character and instill discipline.  That’s it. 

Now, if you are a good enough coach, you can get by without it.  John Calipari is a prime example.  I think he will eventually mellow out in this regard and start recruiting character at Kentucky (he better), but he wanted to make a big splash and that is why he is probably working 18-hour days trying to keep it all together with four blue-chip freshmen all playing significant roles in the lineup, all with at least a small history of character issues.  What Calipari has done this year is easily the best coaching job in college basketball over the past 20 years…by a WIDE margin.  But that kind of thing is not sustainable at a top flight college program, because it only takes one miss when you are recruiting talent and not character. 

Enough about Coach Cal.  Well, one more thing – his performance this year has earned him a seat at my table of great college basketball coaches.  In case anyone is still not clear on this, there are only 2 criteria – how often do you lose games you are supposed to win, and how often do you win games you are supposed to lose?  Of course, both of those have to be looked at along with overall success.  For instance, if you build an NBA team at Kansas an win an NCAA Championship with them, then inherit an NBA team from Matt Doherty and win another national championship, then build your own NBA team again and win a national championship a few years later, then you still get credit.  Sure, just about anyone can coach those kids once they are playing as a unit, but someone had to get them there, so we can reluctantly give Roy Williams some credit and give him a seat at the table…but he’s getting the last steak left on the plate.  Am I still bitter that he absolutely botched the Kansas game in the 2008 Final Four and then botched the opportunity for an undefeated season when Carolina was head and shoulders better than every single team they played last year?  Damn right I am. 

OK – back to rest of these guys and recruiting character.  First of all, you have the police blotter character, and that usually just won’t fly at any of these programs.  Usually, even one of those guys on a team is too many, but if you get more than one, they always end up in cahoots and doing something stupid together, like stealing laptops from their fellow students (Marcus Williams).  It’s possible to have one of those guys on your team, but you need a few really good character guys to balance it out.

Where you can really get into trouble is having lots of guys with small character flaws all playing on the same team.  For instance, the 2009-2010 North Carolina Tar Heels.  There is no excuse for a team with a front line of Ed Davis, Tyler Zeller and Deion Thompson to miss the tournament…unless they have a coach that cannot elevate them above their questionable character.  I am not talking about criminal behavior anymore, I am talking about character in big moments and tight spots throughout a season of basketball games.  You are either born for the bright lights or you are not, and it is not always readily apparent until the bright lights are on.

Well, as it turns out, none of those 3 Carolina players are built for the bright lights.  They are all going to play in the NBA, and might even all be great role players there, but having them all on the same team and playing significant minutes in college over the course of an ACC schedule is a bona fide disaster.

I guess the main problem is that most of the top flight recruits have been able to do whatever they want on a basketball court for years and years…they just have too much size, talent and determination for the guys they are playing against.  But when they get to college, and they have to rely on heart and character as much as athleticism and skills, that’s when some of those blue chips turn into cow chips.

The next area of coaching where some of these programs have fallen down this year is in preparation.  Sure, it would be easy to point to the fact that all of these programs have lost a lot of players to the NBA over the past 12 months…but that is only part of the story.  I have seen all of these coaches out-prepared by lesser-known coaches just about all year long, and there is no excuse for it.  In fact, the only possible explanation is that these coaches are either not working hard enough or not working smart enough.

When you are essentially the CEO of a small corporation and the only job of that corporation is to win as many games as possible, it’s kind of inexcusable to not be prepared for each and every game.  When you throw in the fact that your bosses have provided you with some of the best facilities in the entire country, teams of people to help you, and endless reams of digital evidence of the strengths and weaknesses of every opponent, it becomes an absolute joke. 

The sad part is that every one of these guys had to know that this season was going to be a challenge, and had to know that being able to tip the scales in their favor 3 or 4 extra times throughout the year would potentially make the all the difference…and they still all lost multiple games to what could be considered the dregs of their conferences.  They did not lose those games, and could NEVER lose those games based on talent, only based on preparation…

And on our third area of coaching where these guys have fallen down.  In order for UCLA to lose to 3 games against the worst 3 teams in their conference, with superior talent in every one of those games, it cannot only be about preparation.  Ben Howland is being outcoached.  Sure, it’s kind of tough to state it in such plain terms like that, since all of these things kind of tie themselves together.  For instance, I saw Roy Williams out-prepared and outcoached by a minimum of 7 lesser coaches this year alone.  Now, that is a remarkably prevalent pattern with Roy over his entire career, but you cannot discount the character issues here as well.

I think it might even be safe to say that if playing at Carolina, or UConn, or Arizona, or UCLA and having the potential to make millions of dollars is not enough to motivate you, then maybe you are not able to be motivated.  Perhaps missing the tournament and suffering one heartbreaking loss after another to inferior teams might wake one of these 4 teams up, but I doubt it.  Seriously, if you look at the schedules and results for all of these teams (IU, too), there are very few blowouts on there.  They were in each game and competing, just did not have the intestinal fortitude to win the game down the stretch.  They either did not have the character, were not well enough prepared, or we not coached properly…or some combination of the three.

In my opinion, I think it all starts with character, and all of these teams have serious character issues.

Do not believe the hype.  Not one radio or television sports personality had a single negative thing to say about the Big East before, and now all these guys are coming out of the woodwork.  I have heard some guys get on the case of some teams, but not a single person has talked about the Big East being down or predicted anything like what happened on Thursday.  Here’s what happened – the Big East had a bad day with 1 pretty good team and 2 mediocre teams getting beaten…all of them by teams that have won championships already this year.

So, before we close the casket, let’s take a look at the remaining teams from the Big East: Syracuse, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Louisville and Villanova.  There is absolutely a very good chance that 3 of those teams could be in the Elite Eight, maybe more…and 1 of those teams could make it to Indianapolis, perhaps as many as 3 of them.  That list contains 4 of the Top 20 teams in the country and a team that is coached by Rick Pitino.  Speaking of Pitino, just to review – the other 3 Big East coaches participating in Friday’s action are: Jim Boeheim, Bob Huggins, and Jamie Dixon.  Any of those guys know what they are doing in the tournament?

There is no other analysis necessary…I just wanted to go on the record to let everyone know that I will be the first one to say I was wrong if the Big East continues to fall apart…but if they do not, you know who will be chirping the loudest.

So, one more time through the facts – the Big East still has 4 teams remaining that are in the Top 20 teams in the country and have 3 of the top coaches of all time (Boeheim, Pitino, Huggins) and 2 of the top young coaches in the college game right now (Dixon and Wright) still representing the conference in the tournament, the atrocious performance by Jay Wright and his team on Thursday notwithstanding.

There’s really nothing else to say about it.  The Big East has way too many quality teams left, coached by quality coaches, for some of these morons to start badmouthing the conference.  Of course, bashing of the 3 coaches that lost on Thursday is not only acceptable but highly encouraged.

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.

Actually, to call them buffoons is probably a bit shortsighted (not to mention mildly offensive to buffoons everywhere).  They are merely puppets following orders to perpetuate every bias that exists.  When I talk about the biases, there are mainly 3, all designed to make the most money possible for the folks that stand to make a financial gain from the tournament.  They are: program bias, conference bias and East Coast bias.  Here are some very quick explanations:

Program Bias. This is the kind of bias that gave Florida a 10 seed this year.  Every expert has been talking for 2 weeks about how Florida is squarely on the bubble, but with the kind of revenue potential Florida has, I guess we are forced to believe that they really were not on the bubble at all.  How else can you justify a #10 seed for that team this year?

Conference Bias.  While I could just as easily cite the Florida example above one more time, this is the kind of bias that had Ohio State ranked #5 in the country in the most recent poll, despite 3 losses to teams with an RPI over 50, one of those to a team with an RPI over 100.  Sound like a Top 5 team to you?  I didn’t think so, but when you play in a conference with enough power to get you some huge bias, then anything is possible, and I guess that the bias apparently does not take a year off when that conference is having a down year.

East Coast Bias.  I am not sure if this one is even worth brining up this year, since the conferences out west were so damn weak.  In fact, the conference bias usually trumps the East Coast bias handily, and this year was no exception.  More on that one later.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that I have my own bracket.  It is located at www.rpibracket.com, and I created the bracket during the 2008-2009 college basketball season with the express purpose of trying to quantify the screw job put on schools and conferences that do not have as much revenue generating potential as other schools and conferences.  I came up with a pretty good algorithm that uses the data, and nothing else, to determine the 34 most worthy at-large teams at any given point in time.  Oh hell, let’s be honest – my algorithm is not “pretty good”.  It is great.  It is the most accurate measure that currently exists for predicting which teams SHOULD be in the tournament, according to how they have performed over the entire season, and which teams should not be in.

Incidentally, I do not discuss the algorithm itself, except in general terms.  I will, and have on several occasions, shown all data points from 2 schools, side by side, to make for an easy comparison.  I have not yet been unable to clearly defend why one team was included/excluded over another or received a better/worse seed than another.  It’s kind of easy to win an argument when you have the facts on your side.

So, in the inaugural season last year, the selection committee and myself only differed on 4 teams, and that is once again the case this year.  Last year, my job of defending my 4 teams against the committee’s 4 teams was really a walk in the park.  You see, all 4 of my teams were from outside of the power conferences, and all 4 of the committee’s teams were from within the 6 power conferences (in alphabetical order: ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, PAC-10 and SEC). Kind of the whole point behind why I started RPIBracket.com in the first place…proving, through the objective data, how the selection committee tries to screw the little guy in the interest of making money for the NCAA and its sponsors.

This year, I actually had to work the data and come up with some analysis, other than “the committee wanted to make money, so these 4 teams from the big 6 conferences were in their bracket, and these 4 teams from outside the big 6 conferences were in my bracket.  I used the data to make my decisions and not how much money I could make by pimping out amateur athletes, so my bracket is better.”  This year, all 8 teams involved are from the 6 power conferences.

So, how the heck am I supposed to defend my 4 teams, when their 4 teams are essentially from the same well-privileged few?  Actually, it wasn’t that hard.  Let’s take a quick tour through the 8 teams.

I have: Seton Hall, Cincinnati, Virginia Tech, Illinois

They have: Minnesota, Florida, California, Louisville

Let’s remember what this argument is about, OK?  The selection committee exists for one purpose and one purpose only – ensuring the maximum revenue potential for the NCAA basketball tournament.  And they are damn good at it.  It’s just a shame that so many teams that worked so hard and demonstrated their worthiness to participate over the course of 4 1/2 months have to get screwed in the name of money.

For starters, let me just say that the data is very similar for all 8 of these teams.  California is the one anomaly, with a very high RPI (22), but some absolutely disgusting losses (3 against teams with an RPI of 101+) and only 1 win against the RPI Top 50.  But this is not about the data, because it never is about the data with the selection committee.  It is about the money.

So, which 4 teams of the 8 on that list above have the highest revenue potential in the NCAA Tournament?  Florida, California, Louisville and Illinois, right?  And the other 4 are not even close, right?  Well, that’s three of theirs and one of mine.  I think it really is a crap shoot among all these teams, and it’s really a coin flip if you are looking for another team from the Big 10, so I don’t really have a problem with Minnesota getting in.  Actually, I don’t have much of a problem with any of their teams being in or any of my teams being out.  But it does bear repeating that 3 of the top 4 revenue potential schools out of the 8 are in the selection committee’s bracket, and the other one just completed a magical run to the conference final of…wait for it…one of the big 6 conferences.

So, like I said – no real heartburn there.  You really could have picked any 4 of those 8 teams to fill the field.  I do, however, have a HUGE problem with the level of bending over backwards to accommodate the big conferences this year with regard to seeding…such as Florida being on the bubble for 2 weeks and then getting a 10 seed because they can make lots of money for the NCAA…and every expert saying for a whole month that the PAC-10 is a 1-bid league and the committee refusing to relinquish the extra revenue that comes with making all 6 power conferences have multiple bids.

Now, for the analysis.  Let’s keep this simple.  If my seed is within 2 seeds of that dreamed up by the selection committee, then we will just look at the general analysis.  But for the “big misses”, where a team’s seed in my bracket is 3 or more spots different than their seed in the committee’s bracket, well, that is when we really start to see the bias come out.

OK.  Here is how this works.  “Even” means that the committee and myself have the same seed for that team.  “Too High” means that I gave the team a better seed than the committee.  “Too Low” means that I gave the team a worse seed than the selection committee. Here is the basic analysis for the ones where we were close.

Nothing too squirrely going on there, except for the “1 Too High” section.  Those numbers mean that the data says that the selection committee actively seeded 12 teams from outside the power conferences too low, most probably because they do not want them to advance, as it will cost the NCAA money if those teams do so.  Everyone always claims how much they love the underdog and love watching a mid-major make a deep run.  That is a bunch of bunk.  The George Mason – Florida game in 2006 got some of the lowest ratings ever for a Final Four game.

Anyway, now let’s take a look at the 12 teams where we were off by 3 seeds or more.

Wow.  For those that are mathematically challenged (“A Sea of Blue” readers, I am talking to you…just kidding…you know I love you guys), for the “Too High” columns, a big number on the right means the committee is after some money, and for the “Too Low” columns, a big number on the left means they are after the money.

So, the bottom line is that, of the 12 teams that we both have in our bracket, when we differ on the seeding of that team by 3 or more seeds, in 10 out of those 12 cases (over 83%), you can point directly at the selection committee favoring the teams from the big 6 conferences.

In fact, if you take out the teams where we differ by only 3 seeds, then it becomes 100%.  5 out of 5 teams where we differed by > 3 seeds, the committee was chasing the money.  In case you care, here are the teams with the largest discrepancy.  The non-big-6 conference teams that got the shaft are in BOLD.

So, what does it all mean?  Nothing, I guess.  Is anyone surprised that the selection committee has decided to err on the side of making as much money as possible for the NCAA and its sponsors?

I know I am not surprised one bit.

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?

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.

1.  I Think Gus Johnson’s Act is Getting Tired Already.  For starters, I love Gus Johnson.  When he is doing a game, and it is getting more and more exciting with each passing moment, and he is getting more and more out of control with each passing moment…it probably does not get any better than that in the current sports landscape.  But Gus, can you please reserve that kind of behavior only for moments that deserve it?  When a team trailing by 19 goes on a 5-0 run to cut the lead to 14 points with the other team’s 2 best players on the bench, we don’t need you acting like something exciting is happening, or even ABOUT to happen.  Seriously, doing that kind of thing is not only starting to cheapen what you bring to the table, it is starting to grate against people.

2.  Roy Williams is a Solid Division I Men’s Basketball Coach.  That’s it.  Sorry, but that’s all you get from me, Roy.  You had a team with a legitimate shot at being one of the truly special teams in NCAA history, and you coached them to losses against Boston College, Wake Forest and Maryland.  Granted, you had a little bad luck with Marcus Ginyard going down for the year and with Tyler Zeller being an absolute moron, but you absolutely do not get a free pass for losing to those 3 teams when they don’t even have one player that can start for your team.  You will notice that I have given you a free pass for losing to BC in the ACC Tournament, because Ty Lawson was a spectator and you had already pissed away any chance at real greatness your team had.  Don’t get me wrong, as a huge Tar Heels fan, I like that Roy has kept the magic going…I like the recruits he keeps getting (although an argument could be made that Dean Smith is about 95% responsible for every recruit that comes to Carolina)…and I like the assistant coaches he is able to attract.  But I have never, not one single time in his entire tenure in Chapel Hill, seen him elevate a team beyond its potential.  Not once was there a Tar Heel team that we thought had Sweet Sixteen potential and he took them to the Final Four.  Sure, it’s kind of difficult when you have Final Four potential just about every year, but can we please stop treating this guy like he is one of the top coaches ever?  He just took a team that could have easily been regarded as one of the best 3 or 4 teams in NCAA history and turned them into just another National Champion.

3.  I am Starting to Turn the Corner on Tom Izzo.  Michigan State exceeded their ceiling under the guidance of Tom Izzo.  The mere fact that this happened during the 2008-2009 season puts Tom Izzo on a better “historically great” footing than Roy Williams.  I think Izzo might just be the real deal.  Anyone who has been following the blog knows that in order for me to think a coach is the real deal, he has to elevate his team on a regular basis…not merely meet expectations but exceed them.  And that is EXACTLY what Michigan State did this year.  I am not ready to put Izzo up there with the all-timers yet, but I am suitably impressed with his coaching this year.  To add to his legacy even more, some of his former assistants are starting to make some noise.  Look at what Tom Crean has done and continues to do.  Everyone knew it was going to be a down year for Indiana, but no one knew how bad until the roster started to take shape…a member of the Indiana baseball team, an equipment manager, and a couple of guys that I think I recognized from my local pickup game Sunday mornings at the Indy JCC were all getting minutes as the season progressed.  That team went 1-17 in conference and was competitive in a lot of those games, and they never quit or gave up on one single game along the way.  Crean is a good one…and if he continues to coach his players to exceed their capabilities year after year, he will one day be mentioned with the all-time greats, like I think his mentor Tom Izzo might be as well, based on his performance and the performance of his team this year.

That’s it.  Just a few thoughts that were swimming around my head at one point during the last few weeks of the college basketball season, at least enough so that I thought enough to write them down.

There you have it.  My NCAA notepad for the 2008-2009 season is officially empty.  Well, I think I feel a blog post coming on that is kind of a cautionary tale to Kentucky about their recent hire.  They can ill afford any kind of violation or investigation, and the NCAA is going to send a message very soon that they are going to come down hard on people that bend the rules.

We Have Seen This Kind of Thing Before.

Here they are, in order:

• North Carolina
• Kentucky
• Louisville
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Arizona
• Illinois
• Duke
• Maryland
• Ohio State
• Wisconsin
• Syracuse
• UCLA
• Michigan State
• Arkansas
• UNLV
• Xavier
• NC State
• Wake Forest
• Pittsburgh

So, let’s do some of that world-famous research that folks have come to expect from us here at MackOnSports, vice just spouting off at the mouth, which we still do most of the time…we just like to have a fact or two in our hip pocket to back up our arguments…we have found that in addition to helping us win most of our arguments about sports, it also has the added bonus of making us much more annoying to those who are on the losing end of those arguments.  So, it really is a no-brainer on every level to do some research.  Anyway, here are a few numbers that just kind of jump out at us:

• National Champions, Last 5 Years
  • Top 20:  3
  • All Others:  2
• National Champions, Last 10 Years
  • Top 20:  7
  • All Others:  3
• Final Four Teams, Last 5 Years
  • Top 20:  12
  • All Others:  8
• Final Four Teams, Last 10 Years
  • Top 20:  25
  • All Others:  15
• National Championships, All Time
  • Top 20:  47
  • All Others:  20

Now, let’s go ahead and take a slightly different look at the haves vs. the have nots.  Instead of looking at the program’s value, let’s just go based on what the experts would tell you are the most prestigious programs – basically the “Big Five” and the next 4 teams that are knocking on the door, in terms of prestige.  This list had 10 names on 10 days ago, but Memphis will have to earn their way back onto the list.  Here they are, the “Big 9”.

• UCLA
• Kentucky
• North Carolina
• Indiana
• Duke
• Kansas
• UConn
• Michigan State
• Louisville

Now, let’s look at those same stats from before:

• National Champions, Last 5 Years
  • Big 9:  3
  • All Others:  2
• National Champions, Last 10 Years
  • Big 9:  6
  • All Others:  4
• Final Four Teams, Last 5 Years
  • Big 9:  11
  • All Others:  9
• Final Four Teams, Last 10 Years
  • Big 9:  20
  • All Others:  20
• National Championships, All Time
  • Big 9:  40
  • All Others:  27

So, what does it all mean?  I guess it just means that the rich get richer and the poor get left out…and they get more and more left out with each passing round of the tournament each year.

We have been very consistent with our bemoaning the fact that the NCAA Tournament has become a big business – it easily screws 4 or 5 smaller schools out of making the tournament every single year.  Hell, it even made us so angry that we started a second web site (www.RPIBracket.com) just to see how much the selection committee disregarded the objective data about a team’s tournament worthiness and favored the big conferences and schools over the little guys.  We have chronicled their 2009 performance here:  http://www.mackonsports.com/blog/2009/03/16/money-grubbing-101-or-how-to-screw-the-little-guy/

The heart of the problem is that the same relatively small group of teams are always going to be well represented in the Final Four and have a preponderance of the national championships, regardless of how the selection committee does their job.  And we think it is only going to get worse.

Take a look at those two lists again – the Top 20 programs financially and the “Big 9” in terms of prestige – and answer one question: how many of the next 10 National Champions will not be on one or both of those lists?   Only time will tell the answer, but I think it will be 2 or less.