(11-18-2022 05:50 PM)Schaefer Beer Wrote: (11-15-2022 08:24 PM)Big Red Wrote: I'm not so sure man... But welcome to the board.
Anyway.
It still surprises me how many people either fail to see or refuse to acknowledge the fact that a gulf exists between the best MAC school and like half of a conference like the SEC, let alone teams from the B1G, the PAC-12, Big 12, and the top teams in the ACC. And then you often have Notre Dame to throw into that mix of potential teams.
To think that the winner of the MAC should get an automatic bid into a championship tournament over the 2nd and even 3rd best teams in the SEC is being more than obtuse to how good those teams are.
I agree. I also look at the NCAA BB tourney the same way with the automatic bids.i wish they take the best 64 teams and go from there. Yes, it is fun to see if Princeton can upset the #1 seed, but let's be honest, a team that wins a first round upset is not going to go too far.
If people say what about a Loyola or George Mason making the Final Four? In the those years, both teams were very good and would have been a top 64 team regardless if they won their conference tourney or not.
I'd actually go another route with the BB Tournament.
First, I'd reward the regular season conference champions with an automatic bid. I know these conferences want to entice the field to win their tournaments and are doing so with the bid coming from the tournaments, but this is how you get a 15-16 team in the tournament.
So, I would give every conference regular season champ an auto-bid then I could be enticed to offer a 2nd bid to the conference champ if it's different from the regular season champ. I really don't think we'd see teams tank just to get a rival in the tournament with them so any talk of that is unnecessary and, if it became a problem, then it could be dealt with.
After those champs are slotted in, then go with the regular slotting system. Heck, I might even make a separate play-in tournament (kind of like the play-in games they already are doing which make literally no sense to me how a 16 seed can automatically get in yet two 11 seeds have to play each other for the right to play the 6 seed, anyway...).
This way, you get 1 or 2 from that field to slot in somewhere.
Oh..also, if one of those tournament champs was not a regular season champ, but would have gotten in anyway, they don't have to play in the play-in tournament. This play-in tournament would just be for teams that wouldn't have gotten in....like....a MAC school or basically most mid-major conferences. This could even be determined (which teams are relegated to the play-in tournament either before the season or at some point during the season.
Anyway, it gets a little messy when you don't know how many teams would make that play-in tournament. Maybe have it at 1 location and then adjust the seeding with byes or whatever and possibly play 2 games in 1 day, if need be.
ESPN would sh!t itself over the chance to broadcast the entire play-in tournament in like a 2 or 3 day period. And the sports books would go ape sh!t over it.