Once again, I know that this will never happen. But the Lunatic also wants to add games that help evaluate teams. Instead of allowing more teams into the tournament, lets add a set of games. The NCAA tried this once and it failed – but it was bound to fail. It was the bracket busters – it set up one game between the top non-power conference teams. The idea was that the win would bump up the winner’s profiles. But the problem was that winning those games just was not enough of a mover.
One problem that I have is what North Texas went through – they never got to play a power conference team.
So, here is my proposal. We are going to add two weeks to the schedule, with games that will not count against the overall total that a team can play.
There were 100 teams that made the NCAA and NIT. These teams will get rewarded with a tournament to start the season. We can have 6 tournaments of 16 teams and one of 4 teams. The tournament will redo the Sweet 16 teams, the teams that made the Second Round, etc. with one rule – it needs to guarantee that 4 of the teams in the tournament are from conferences outside of the Big 12, Big 10, SEC, ACC, Pac 12 or Big East. The top 4 non-power conference teams will host the first two rounds where winners play winners and losers play losers – that means everyone gets at least 2 games against what likely will be talented teams (and the non-power teams finally get to play them at home). Then, the winners of each group of 4 will play at neutral sites that are famous to try to get some excitement (Madison Square Garden, for example). At a minimum, non-power teams will get two quality opponents, and could get 4.
Then, we will add one week to the season at the end of December / first week of January. No one can schedule a game during this week because everyone is going to be told where they are playing. We will take the current NET ranking and use it to create 8 team tournaments – top 8 play each other, 9-16 play each other, etc. A couple of forced rules. Each group of 8 has to have at least 2 non-power conference teams. We likely can’t find enough neutral sites for these, and we want to be able to have tons of fans – so in this case, we will let whoever is the top team in the grouping host the tournament. It will work just like the holiday tournaments, which will allow everyone to get 3 games against teams considered around the same skill level. And if you are a non-power conference team near the top of the rankings, you are likely guaranteed to play one game against a power conference team – which can really improve your profile.
We can always simply increase the numbers into the NCAA tournament – but then we need to figure out how that increase doesn’t just end up having all the non-power conference teams playing in the first round. If you win your conference tournament, you should automatically make the Round of 64. And if the numbers of the NCAA tournament increase, it has to come with the rule that you have to have a winning record in your conference. More access should mean more access to the teams who tend to not have a chance to get in. It should go to a team like Dayton who comes in 2nd place in the Atlantic 10 and gets ignored because they lose in the conference tournament final, not to a power conference team that went 16-16 for the season.
We know this won’t happen. But could you imagine how fun this would be. On New Year’s Eve, you would have a tournament that would basically have the top 8 teams at that moment play each other. It is probably too hard to organize, which is why it won’t happen. But I think it would solve a lot of the problems for the Selection Committee.
Well – we are 10 minutes away from San Diego State and Florida Atlantic tipping offf. I am so excited – it is going to be a fun night of basketball.