Blog Number 3

Radical Plan for NCAA Basketball Tournament


As I was watching "The Tournament" the past couple of days, I noticed all the excitement (obviously) of the fans and players of the winning teams. Not just the lower seed upsets, but the favorites as well. This got me to thinking about the way the brackets are set up.

And I have a few questions. Why are these brackets set up by geographical regions? Last I checked, Portland is not in the south. Greensboro N.C. is not in the midwest. And Alburquerque is not in the south nor the east. Why does Kentucky always seem to play somewhere in Kentucky, and North Carolina always play somewhere in Carolina? And how come thee never seems to be a team from the west seeded high in the west?

Now I watched Selection Sunday. What took them an hour to do can be done in 5 minutes. And then they had a program to rank all the teams from 1 to 68. I understand it is TV. I understand its revenue. My plan can keep all these elements, along with taking all the pressure off the selection committee on where to place the teams in the brackets. This is so simple I'm surprised nobody has come up with it before.

You keep your conference tournaments. You keep your committee deciding who gets the at large bids. Heck, you increase the lenght of your TV show because of the suspense. The good teams should still be able to advance if they are that good---after the last couple of days they couldn't do much worse. And more of these schools would have the oppurtunity to move on to the next round. That's what we want. Learn about more of the players. More feel good stories. More chances for more students to feel like those kids from Norfolk State and Lehigh. I guarentee that people going to those schools now will never forget the feeling of this past weekend.

Here is my plan---since the regions thing make no sense at all, get rid of them. Then once you have identified your teams, into the lottery you go. Fill in the play in games first. You're Kentucky, your number 1, your little ball comes out first, you play Tuesday. You don't like it, go to the NIT. Duke plays North Carolina in the first round? Win or go home. I'm pretty sure Iona would like to beat Vermont to move to the third round--and the fans would love it. Think of all the human interest stories. Think of all the joy for winning games. Think of filling in your bracket. And the better teams will still end up playing in the end. Think it might be interesting...