Not officially, of course. As far as the NCAA is concerned, NCAA Tournament pools do not exist. But effectively, they’ve just thrown a huge monkey wrench into the mid-March plans of every pool administrator, myself included:
The final four at-large teams and final four automatic qualifiers in the newly minted 68-team NCAA men’s basketball tournament field will meet for the right to enter the traditional 64-team draw, tournament selection committee chairman Dan Guerrero announced Monday.
The “First Four” will be played either the Tuesday or Wednesday after Selection Sunday. The winners of the four games will advance to what will now be called the “second round” on either Thursday or Friday. The newly named third round — with 16 games — will be Saturday and Sunday. …
This is the first time the last four at-large teams will be revealed publicly. Traditionally, the at-large teams are scattered throughout the seeding process, rarely going past No. 12, making it relatively easy to identify them. Yet the committee now will formally announce the last at-large teams by putting them in the first round.
Guerrero and Shaheen said the last four at-large teams would be put on the seed line the committee decided they earned. So, this could mean that two could be considered No. 12 seeds playing for the right to play a No. 5 and two could be No. 11s vying to play a No. 6 in the second round.
This is a weird hybrid solution, creating two “play-in games” between low-major teams, and two “play-in games” between at-large teams. I have various problems with it, but for the moment, I want to focus on something purely practical: its effect on tournament pools.
If the NCAA had simply shoved the “bottom eight” low-major teams (basically, the #15 and #16 seeds under the old system) into play-in games, that would have had little practical effect on tournament pools, since very few people are going to pick those teams anyway, so they have little impact on the bracket. But now that we’ve got four teams seeded in the #10-12 range competing on Tuesday or Wednesday, those are teams that could realistically win several games in the bracket, so you’ve gotta consider them. That means all tournament brackets will need to be turned in by Tuesday instead of by midday Thursday.
Thus, office pool administrators now have just TWO DAYS to organize pools. Martha from Accounting will get her bracket Monday morning, and must turn it in by Tuesday afternoon. This will inevitably decrease the level of participation in office pools, which will in turn decrease casual interest in the tournament. Not by a huge amount, but by a measurable amount.
Ugh. I hate this. It’s still better than a 96-team tournament, obviously, but it’s completely stupid anyway. If you’re going to put at-large teams in the opening round, include 8 of ’em, and leave the low-major conference champions alone! Or, alternatively, if you’re going to increase the number of low-major conference champs “playing in” to the tournament, increase that number to 8, and leave the at-large teams alone (and avoid all the second-order negative consequences of messing up the bracket that go with the at-large solution).
P.S. About those “various problems” I mentioned… let’s see. Well, first of all, the renaming of the rounds is f***ing stupid — 60 of the 64 teams playing in the “second round” will, in fact, be playing their first game — and it greases the wheels, at least rhetorically, toward future expansion.
Also, you’re unfairly advantaging two randomly chosen #5, #6 or #7 seeds, who will get to play a tired team, while all the other #5-7s will be playing a rested team. This solution also necessarily messes with bracketing principles. And the idea that the “First Four” matchups should be matchups of “like” teams is completely anathema to the way a bracket is supposed to be set up. So we have the best “First Four” team playing the second-best, and the third-best playing the fourth-best? Huh? So it’s better to be considered third-best (or, hell, fourth-best) than second-best??
Lastly, this isn’t really an argument against the format, but are you ready for the controversies about which at-large teams were “screwed” by getting shoved into the “First Four,” and which at-large teams were unfairly given byes into the “second round”?
Ugh. SO DUMB.
Pingback: Tweets that mention NCAA shortens all March Madness pools’ entry period by 2 days -- Topsy.com
It’s the NCAA, of course it’d dumb.
It should serve as a warning to all you football playoff proponents too, what you get might not be such a great thing after all 🙂
Also, this format is, as Brendan said, stupid.
Two days’ layoff should not make a tired team. In fact, I’d rather have the rusty team than the team that’s technically already won one “tournament” game.
It’s nice that the NCAA didn’t take the stupidest option (96-team expansion), but they’re still making bad ones. Conference champions earned the right to be in the tournament proper, not a play-in game. It doesn’t matter if there are now four games instead of one, they’re still play-in games.
What would you suggest we do instead David? Say a World Cup style round robin round followed by a direct elimination bracket? Oh wait, that’s what playoff proponents want. Every other sport uses a bracket to pick the final winner get over it, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than what we have now.
Gee dcl, forgive me for questioning the One True System. I’ll go genuflect before the Holy Bracket and beg and PLEAD for forgiveness for daring to think that the playoff system is anything but perfect.
Get over yourself.
do you have a better suggestion?
I’m not trying to offer a better or worse suggestion. I’m trying to point out that the playoff system isn’t without its drawbacks, and that if/when it happens its not going to bring about world peace like some seem to believe. The way the NCAA is handling March Madness is an indication that they can screw up a playoff system too.
As an unabashed defender of the 96-team tourney concept, I have to say that, in fact, this idea is completely lame, distorts the fairness of seeding for at-large teams and their initial opponents, and is worse than the 96-team bracket. If these changes are being made to grease the skids for further expansion, this is a completely retarded way to do it. Still, whether it’s the first round or the second round or the third round, we will still call them “Round of 32” and “Round of 16”, so the practical effect of the naming convention change seems to me even far less impacting than when they changed Division I-AA to “FCS” (as most people still colloquially refer to those teams as I-AA teams).
P.S. – In light of the conference realignment dance that went on earlier this summer (with Colorado, OU, TTU, OSU, and Texas almost leaving for the Pac-10, TAMU almost leaving for the SEC, and the rest of the Big 12 looking at having to cobble together a “table scraps” conference), does it strike anyone else how eerily prescient this picture almost turned out to be?
I’m not sure that we’d end up with four 16 team super conferences like that picture projected. I think the SEC in particular doesn’t need to expand, they would only do so if the home run opportunities presented themselves, whereas exapnsion for the Pac-10 had much more upside to even a modest expansion. Florida would almost certainly have opposed SEC expansion to other schools within its own state. I think adding Texas A&M and one more school to balance out would have been sufficient for the SEC. If the Pac-10 goes to 16 I think the Big Ten is the only other league that would really pursue that increase by nabbing Rutgers and Pitt, preassuring Notre Dame to join and finishing off with either MIssouri or Syracuse.
I’d bet you’d see:
Pac-16
Big Ten(16)
SEC (14)
ACC (12-14)
Mountain West (12)
The Big East would either disolve or scrape together a few more teams and hang on for dear life.
You know, the Big East missed the boat here, I think. When the Big 12 was in the process of breaking apart (until, you know, it wasn’t), they should have made a big play for Kansas. Other then geography (and the Big East hasn’t cared about that for years anyway – unless Marquette counts as a team in the East of the US somehow under weird geography), Kansas is a great fit for the Big East. A basketball first school, which was looking precariously like it would be out of a BCS conference. They would get a school that at least fields a football team, and might be able to strengthen their basketball brand enough to make themselves indispensable. Now, they are still stuck in the precarious position they were in before with football. Who knows, they might have been able to get Mizzou to jump ship with Kansas, which again, helps the Big East.
I suspect the Big East is still on the verge of breaking apart when the Superconferences fully consolidate.
Pingback: NCAA shortens all March Madness pools' entry period by 2 days
David, if you don’t accept a playoff as a viable alternative then it would be up to you to suggest a functional way to select a Div I-A football champion. Nobody is saying playoffs are perfect. But they are certainly far better than the system presently in place. If there is a better way than playoffs please do tell. If not then that’s basically the argument isn’t it?