What if we let a computer select the NCAA Tournament field?

[Kung Wu]

Just a few of the changes we would have seen if Pomeroy was used directly for seeding this year:

WSU falls from a 1 to a 2 (shockernet goes into full meltdown mode and pleads for the selection committee to come back into power)
Michigan falls from a 2 to a 5
Tennessee jumps from an 11 to a 3 (shockernet refuses to complain about a 12 loss team as a 3 seed because WSU beat Tennessee, and any argument against Tennessee would be equal to hatred toward WSU)
Pittsburgh (AKA garbage) jumps from a 9 to a 5 (ShockerFever spontaneously combusts in anger)
Iowa State falls from a 3 to a 6

Ok, that was funny. LOL

[Kung Wu]

This isn't about using computers for seeding, but what about only having "at-large" teams competing in the "Round 1" games?

My reasoning is that every conference's automatic team got that bid by the rules. Either winning their conference tournament or, if no tournament, by winning the conference title. They should not have to do a play-in game to make the field of 64. Only those teams that didn't get an automatic bid, at large teams, should be included in Round 1.

Another reason for this is making Round 1 more relevant by only having bigger conference teams involved, probably drawing more TV and fan interest in that round. I wouldn't even mind if they expanded the number of teams to 10 or 12 ending most of the controversy over a "deserving" team not making the field. You now could have up to 6 teams in the field that would have been left out under the old 64 cut off line. Between those 12 teams you will have covered any team that would have had a reasonable argument that they should be in had there only been 64 teams. There would be little doubt of the 71st team that didn't make this field actually having a case that their resume was good enough to make the old 64 team cut off. Now you would have 6 games where teams can earn their way in since they couldn't get it done otherwise.

Interrrresting.

[CBB_Fan]

True cdizzle, but the effect of a team slipping a group (into the top 50 when they should be #51 or vice versa) is minimal when looking at a resume with 34ish games on it.

If you are 5-4 vs the top 50 and 7-1 vs 51-100
or
if you are 6-4 vs the top 50 and 6-1 vs 51-100

not much changes. Sure it would be nice to be even more exact, and I'm all for using better computer models (like KenPom), but my point is that we are best off using computers to group teams in general and then letting humans do the final ranking.

One last small point. Let's focus on WSU. Say one of their opponents slipped into the top 50 of the RPI even though we believe them to really be the 51st best team. Maybe the 49th best team slipped out of the top 50 in the RPI. It can go both ways and generally will even itself out. Sure there will be outliers, but no system is perfect.

We can debate the initial value of using the RPI at all for sorting teams into groups. I'm fine with that. What I can't understand is why anyone would argue that the RPI could actually seed teams better than the committee currently does. I can find countless examples where the RPI would have been horribly unfair to teams.

This may be counterintuitive, but RPI is more accurate than looking at records versus the Top X. Why? Two reasons: home court advantage, and large changes from arbitrary cut-off lines. In reality, what does it matter if you did well against the top 50 or 100 if every game is at home? Is a 1 point win at home versus the number 50 team much better than a 1 point loss at the number 51 team? But that also leads to the other problem with RPI, which is that winning margins aren't accounted for at all.

But anyway, using top X numbers ignores the very real affect of home court advantage. Winning @ a lower ranked opponent can be just as impressive as winning at home versus a top ranked opponent, but going 1-0 against the top 25 looks much more impressive than going 1-0 against the top 50. To get a real estimate, we need some sort of stat that averages every game and includes home court advantage and strength of schedule. A stat like RPI itself.