The anti-rant rant

As promised, here it is: My annual post-NCAA tournament selection rant. And it's probably a lot different than most post-selection rants you've ever encountered. You see, most post-selection rants involve explaining why team A should have gotten in (sometimes, but not always, identifying the team B they should replace) There's usually negative language directed at the tournament selection committee, and the rant tends to contain emotion laden words like "screwed", "snubbed", "raw deal", and two of my personal favorite when applied in reference to something in sports "injustice" and "travesty". And generally, you'll see someone calling for the tournament to expand, perhaps even going as far as suggesting that there should be another full round added, taking the tournament from it's current 65 teams to 128.

No, you see, my rant will not be one of these kind of rants. In fact, my rant will be about those rants. I was actually, in many ways, quite thankful to be travelling yesterday, because it allowed me an easy way to avoid all the post-selection madness, which, based on the radio this morning, was relatively muted this year, but still very much present.

Allow me to frame these kind of rants in a bit of perspective. There are approximately 340 schools with Division I basketball programs at present. So, that means that with the current tournament size of 65 teams, about 20% of all Division I teams get an invitation to the NCAA tournament. Now, 31 of those are automatic bids that go to conference champions, leaving 34 bids as at-large bids to be awarded at the discretion of the selection committee. So, for the sake of insanity, let us assume that, by some major fluke, in a given year, all 31 automatic bids wind up in the hands of teams that would clearly not be tournament caliber. This would very likely never happen, but is, I suppose, possible due to the fact that most conferences, including all of the major conferences, award their automatic bids based on the conference tournament, rather than the regular season. But if it did happen, the committee would still be left with the ability to invite what it believed to be the top 10% of Division I teams to play for the national championship. In most years, the lowest seeded at-large teams wind up in the 11-12 seed range, so typically in order to be selected as an at-large, you're generally going to have to convince the committee you're among the best 45 teams in the country.

I lay all that out to say this - if over the course of a 30+ game regular season, your team has failed to demonstrate clearly that it is among the best 45 teams in the country, then in my opinion, you have clearly demonstrated that you are NOT the best team in the country, and thus you don't have a legitimate gripe about being excluded from the championship tournament. When you get down to the last few teams in/first few teams out, we're no longer talking about teams who have truly earned the right to play for a championship, we're talking about teams we need to use to fill spots in the bracket. I've heard teams who were among the "snubbed" referred to as teams that could "definitely have won a game or two in the tournament", as if that means something. Last time I checked, it takes 6 games to win the tournament, not one or two, and so as long as we aren't leaving out teams that have shown themselves as being capable of doing that, I think we're okay.

To get specific, let's look at the two poster child teams for "snubs" this year: Virginia Tech and Arizona State. Both teams had similar records (19-13 and 19-12, respectively). Both teams finished with about a .500 conference record (9-7 and 9-9), and neither team was in the top 3 of their conference (4th and 5th). Could either of these teams get hot and win a couple games had they been invited to the tournament? Yeah, probably. Can you make a case for their inclusion over 1 or more teams that did get invited? Probably, but it's really all subjective. Does any of that really matter? From where I sit, no. There are teams that earn the right to play for the title, and those that have it graciously bestowed upon them by the selection committee. Teams with resumes like these clearly fall into the latter category when they get into the tournament. And thus, the failure of the committee to bestow said grace in these cases falls far short of a "screw job","raw deal", or an "injustice", even in the sporting sense.

All of that is to say, I just don't care that Virginia Tech, Arizona State, and their kind aren't going to the tournament, even if a couple of similar teams are, and I never have. And neither should you, unless you happen to be a fan of one of those teams, in which case, simmer on. The only reasons I can fathom for the media's incessant fascination with these kind of teams every year are a) standard media willingness to blow up a "controversy" whenever perceived in anyway, or b) a total loss of perspective on what the tournament actually is, that being the process for determining the NCAA champion. I suspect both forces are at work. For my part, I've suggested in the past that once the selection committee gets down to the last 3-4 available spots, they should just identify a group of 6-8 "bubble" teams and do a lottery. It would be about as defensible a way to bestow these bids as current selection processes, and it would be a lot more clear cut.

Look, if you, or anyone else, wants to sit and debate the relative merits of Virginia Tech, Arizona State, and the similar teams that did get an invite to the dance, that's great. I'm not saying this isn't a worthwhile debate to have. But please, unless you have an emotional attachment to a school involved, check the heavy, emotion-laden words at the door. They just don't apply here.

Oh, and by the way, you have to love anyone whose reaction to one or two teams that they perceive as deserving being left out each year is at 63 more spots to the tournament. That's the sports equivalent of applying a tourniquet to a paper cut right there.