Midmajors Deserve Better--New York Times article

[shock]

no they just consider "power conferences" to always be better

[RoyalShock]

no they just consider "power conferences" to always be better

And that is what you can't demonstrate except to point to highly subjective data that if 10 people analyzed you'd get 10 different opinions.

[shock]

Just a question, not meant to make a point, but when was the last time a MAC, America East, Big West, MEAC, Colonial, Southern, Atlantic Sun, Conference USA, Southland, Horizon, NEC, Summit, Ohio Valley, Sun Belt, Big Sky, MVC, WCC, Patriot, MAAC, or an independent got a one seed?

[griswald13]

I see no evidence why the expansion would help mid majors. It might get a few more teams in a year but its not going to change the fact that we can't get BCS teams to schedule mid majors so mid majors SOS will still be lower and they will still pick more BCS teams over mids.

[wufan]

My concern is not that mid-majors won't get more invites if the field expands (I think they will), but that they play-in round will become an elimination round for mid-majors, playing against each other for the right to play the bigger conference teams.

Going to 96 teams means that the top 32 seeds will have a huge advantage over the rest of the field, and they way mid-majors will be discriminated against will not be inclusion in the tournament, but inclusion in the first-round bye group.

I think that if the tournament is going to be expanded, then IF YOU WIN YOUR CONFERENCE TOURNAMENT, no matter what conference you come from, then you get the first round bye. Cut the field of eligible conferences to 32. If you are Syracuse, and you lost the Big lEast to West Virginia, then you have to play an at large team before having the opportunity to play the winner of the MEAC, or whatever. The 64 At-large schools should be required to play one game in order to make the field of 64. Hell, you could even play it at the home venue of the higher seeded school.

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

Just a question, not meant to make a point, but when was the last time a MAC, America East, Big West, MEAC, Colonial, Southern, Atlantic Sun, Conference USA, Southland, Horizon, NEC, Summit, Ohio Valley, Sun Belt, Big Sky, MVC, WCC, Patriot, MAAC, or an independent got a one seed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_NCAA_Men%27s_Division_I_Basketball_Tournament

St Joes

[shock]

My concern is not that mid-majors won't get more invites if the field expands (I think they will), but that they play-in round will become an elimination round for mid-majors, playing against each other for the right to play the bigger conference teams.

Going to 96 teams means that the top 32 seeds will have a huge advantage over the rest of the field, and they way mid-majors will be discriminated against will not be inclusion in the tournament, but inclusion in the first-round bye group.

I think that if the tournament is going to be expanded, then IF YOU WIN YOUR CONFERENCE TOURNAMENT, no matter what conference you come from, then you get the first round bye. Cut the field of eligible conferences to 32. If you are Syracuse, and you lost the Big lEast to West Virginia, then you have to play an at large team before having the opportunity to play the winner of the MEAC, or whatever. The 64 At-large schools should be required to play one game in order to make the field of 64. Hell, you could even play it at the home venue of the higher seeded school.

:whistle: everything else is a good idea though.

[shock]

Just a question, not meant to make a point, but when was the last time a MAC, America East, Big West, MEAC, Colonial, Southern, Atlantic Sun, Conference USA, Southland, Horizon, NEC, Summit, Ohio Valley, Sun Belt, Big Sky, MVC, WCC, Patriot, MAAC, or an independent got a one seed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_NCAA_Men%27s_Division_I_Basketball_Tournament

St Joes

But they're Atlantic Ten.

[SubGod22]

Just a question, not meant to make a point, but when was the last time a MAC, America East, Big West, MEAC, Colonial, Southern, Atlantic Sun, Conference USA, Southland, Horizon, NEC, Summit, Ohio Valley, Sun Belt, Big Sky, MVC, WCC, Patriot, MAAC, or an independent got a one seed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_NCAA_Men%27s_Division_I_Basketball_Tournament

St Joes

But they're Atlantic Ten.

And not a BcS conference

[ShockerFever]

96 teams is just dumb. I don't care if it helps the BCS teams or the middies. It's stupid.

You're gonna get 31 NIT caliber teams that don't belong. The NCAA Tournament is supposed to be hard to get in to. That is the whole friggen point.

[ABC]

I agree.

There needs to be a bit more stingent requirements to be divison 1.

What are those requirements, anyway?

There are several conferences that have no business getting an automatic invite to the Dance.

[shockerfan]

96 teams is just dumb. I don't care if it helps the BCS teams or the middies. It's stupid.

You're gonna get 31 NIT caliber teams that don't belong. The NCAA Tournament is supposed to be hard to get in to. That is the whole friggen point.

They don't need to expand the tourney, I agree. IMHO the problem is there is too many Div 1 schools.

Perhaps they SHOULD create a div 1AA, but the Div 1A should NOT include only BCS conferences. I say cut the number of conferences basically in half. Go back the last 10 years or so to figure out the conference "rankings". The bottom 16 or so conferences become Div 1AA and the top 16 or so are Div 1A. Now you have the 16 conference tourney winners that are automatic qualifiers for the tourney. You would also have the luxury of taking the regular season champs who don't win their tourney as automatic qualifiers as well (since the NIT won't be needed any longer for Div 1A). IMHO the regular season champs are more impressive and deserve to be in the tourney before the conference tourney champs. Anyway, that would be a MAX of 32 automatic bids (which we already have anyway). At that point you could then hand out At Large bids.

This would also make the 16 seeds...etc a little bit stronger than they are now which would make the tourney and the early matchups even more intriguing.

The NIT can then become the tourney for the Div 1AA schools. Which shouldn't be that hard as the NCAA owns the NIT now anyway.

Regardless this would never happen. Just thinking out loud.

[ShockerFever]

Good points ABC and shockerfan..

However shockerfan, one can argue that your proposed action is similar to the idea of the BCS schools wanting to snub the middies with a I-A - I-AA idea, although on a much lower level.

Who are we to say that a MEAC school or an Atlantic Sun school doesn't deserve a chance?

I do agree, at some point, there has to be stricter requirements to become Division I. Eventually, there will be no more Division II at this pace.

[pogo]

Lets make one of the requirements similar to a football 1-A requirement by mandating the paid attendance be set at say 5,200 average/contest. This would elliminate those schools that really don't support their own programs. I used 5,200 since that was the average attendance of Div I baseketball 2008-2009.

[Calshockfan]

Some of you are sounding no different than the BCS fans that you so hate. Let's make it more difficult to become a division I school. Let's exclude the bottom 20 conferences from automatic inclusion in the tournament. Anything to make it easier to get WSU into the NCAA tournament. It takes years to develop a Division I program. Most Division II programs transitioning to Division I have been successful at that level and in time believe they can compete at a higher level. You would deny them that opportunity out of fear that it would jeapordize our own position.

Maybe we should just allow the BCS conferences to compete in the tournament and let everybody else compete for an NIT bid.