Storyline: “C” in NCAA stands for CRONY. ADs make Selection Sunday picks. Scrap that. Follow MLB’s lead (Hall of Fame voting): independent voters select. Have them use a standard metric, too, like RPI. Do that this year? Bona & St. Mary’s are in, Syracuse and Michigan are out. Fair. Just.
It’s March. It’s Selection Sunday. The Big Dance is near.
Courtesy: theundercoverrecruiter.com
And just as they do each and every year, fans and experts call out the NCAA Selection Committee for making mysterious decisions using opaque judgment in selecting At-Large teams. Examples from this week….
Steve Tannen @SportsTalk953 How the crap did the Cuse get in? So much for the @SethDavisHoops theory about reputation playing no role on Selection Sunday.
Lundardi: The Selection Committee Got So Much Wrong — and Here’s How
The criticism is valid. The system is rigged. The deciders are all athletic directors and half of the Selection Committee members come from Power 5 conferences. It’s an inside job with the playing field tilted to the big schools. Political realities require heavy lifting for smaller schools to get At-Large bids.
So how might we level the playing field so that all schools have a fair and reasonable chance of being picked?
Courtesy: vavel.com
The first step is to get ADs out of decision making. They have a huge stake in the outcome, and they don’t just represent their schools; they represent their conferences, aka, “buddy systems.” Do what MLB does with Hall of Fame voting. Get highly respected, award-winning sportswriters who cover teams (including offering critique of those teams) to cast ballots. There are plenty of reputable journalists in this country–knowledgeable, capable people–who can serve in this role.
Then, get personal judgment out of the team selection process. Apply the historic principle to do that–form follows function.
Use statistics (form), say RPI, to select At-Large teams (function).
Use committee judgment (form) to seed teams and slot them in regions (function).
That way you can keep bias and self-serving intent out of the most important decision—which teams are in and which teams aren’t. Devote human decision making to decide where teams go and which teams they play.
Courtesy: campusrush.com
These changes (reforms) are needed because deserving teams–the players, coaches, and fans–are getting screwed. This year it’s difficult to understand a number of At-Large calls. The Committee deemed Monmouth, St. Mary’s, and St. Bonaventure—to named three schools—unworthy. Two other schools—Michigan and Syracuse—were picked. But the unsettling thing is that the “unworthy” teams had better overall records and higher RPIs.
Here are the data:
St. Mary’s, 26-5, West Coast Conference regular season co-champ RPI 40, 9-3, last 12 games, 163 Strength of Schedule (SOS)
Monmouth, 22-7, Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference regular season champ, RPI 55, 10-2, last twelve games, 209 SOS
Michigan, 22-12, Big Ten Conference 8th place, regular season, RPI 58, 5-7 record last 12 games, 45 SOS
Syracuse, 19-13, Atlantic Coast Conference 9th place, regular season, RPI 68, 6-6 record last 12 games, 39 SOS.
You can make the argument that Syracuse plays a more competitive schedule than does St. Mary’s. SOS says as much. And that interpretation probably explains—in large part—the respective season records (Syracuse plays national powers Duke and North Carolina, St. Mary’s plays lesser valued San Francisco and San Diego). But it doesn’t completely explain the RPI scores, which are calculated via winning percentages—of the teams involved, their opponents, and their opponents, opponents—with more weight given to road performances.
Courtesy: twitter.com
And that’s important … or at least it should be. St. Mary’s is in a different league, literally from Syracuse. If we’re going to have both schools compete in the same tournament isn’t it better to evaluate each school based on its competition with peers than comparing the schools to each other? That means evaluating Syracuse vis-à-vis its peers and doing likewise with St. Mary’s. Otherwise separate the schools and have them play in different tournaments.
Well, the answer to the question of whether it’s better to evaluate by peer group is probably yes in theory, but not in practice. That’s because the NCAA wants to keep the system “as is.” Let’s face it: the playing field is tilted in favor of big schools with big markets with big money needs. The system is rigged to get most of the money to flow to big schools and conferences.
Monmouth, St. Bona, and St. Mary’s are all small schools with relatively small followings. They compete in regional (not national) conferences (e.g., Monmouth, Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference). They’d all be “in” if they had won their respective conference tournaments, but none did. That catapults these schools into the same category as Michigan and Syracuse, vying for at-large slots. And it’s an unfair competition.
Why? It’s about that “thing,” money. Lots of it.
The Washington Post reported that the NCAA generated about three-quarters of a billion dollars from its annual basketball tournament in 2014. That’s right: for just one year. The NCAA kept 40% of the total and distributed the rest to participating schools and conferences—a total of about $220 million dollars. Schools got nearly $2 million for playing a first-round game, win or lose. A round-of-16 appearance brought in nearly $5 million for each participant. A Final Four appearance is best, of course, worth nearly $35 million dollars (total) to the four best clubs in March Madness.
Courtesy: Philly.com
The major conferences did well financially, too—about $20 million each, on average, in 2013. That money “means more,” though, for conferences that either don’t play major football or play football outside the “Power 5” sphere. Basketball tournament revenue constituted about $1 in every $5 in the American Athletic Conference’s annual budget vis-à-vis about 7% of the Big Ten’s budget.
All schools and conferences need money. But what about fan needs? Fans make it possible to generate all that cash. For fans a charm of March Madness are runs made by “Cinderella.” And it happens a lot. George Mason made it all the way to the Final Four. Loyola (IL) and Texas Western (now Texas, El Paso) won it all. Florida Gulf Coast beat Georgetown and played in The Sweet 16 against Florida (a dream match-up). And remember Northern Iowa beating Kansas?
Runs like those are almost always enabled when smaller schools win their conference tournaments. And smaller schools often need to win conferences to assure participation. But very deserving teams are often left out. Too often, too. That outcome can be mystifying and (for fans) painful. St. Bona is a great example this year. Bona had its best season in years. It was regular season conference co-champ. Only 29 schools had better RPIs. But Bona won’t Dance.
So, for comparison purposes, what would have happened this year if the Committee had used a statistical system, like RPI, to pick 36 At-Large teams? Would that approach have helped level the playing field?
Courtesy: gobonnies.sbu.edu
The answer is yes. See (from the list below) that St. Bona (Atlantic 10) and St. Mary’s (WCC) would have made it (CAPS in bold). Monmouth would not. The field would have also included several other smaller conference teams—Akron (MAC), Princeton (IVY), San Diego State (Mountain West), and Valparaiso (Horizon)—as well as a major conference school, Florida (SEC).
2016 RPI ranking of At-Large Teams, in order, as of March 13, 2016
Villanova (overall RPI rank 4, rank by Selection Committee, 7)
Oklahoma (6, 6)
Xavier (7, 8)
Miami (8, 10)
West Virginia (12, 9)
Maryland (14, 19)
Purdue (15, 18)
California (16, 14)
Texas A&M (18, 12)
Duke (19, 13)
Dayton (21, 26)
Iowa State (23, 16)
Indiana (24, 17)
Baylor (25, 20)
Arizona (26, 23)
Texas (27, 21)
Iowa (28, 27)
Oregon State (29, 28)
ST. BONAVENTURE (RPI 30, not selected)
Notre Dame (32, 22)
Texas Tech (33, 29)
Colorado (34, 30)
AKRON (RPI 36, not selected)
Virginia Commonwealth (37, 40)
Providence (38, 33)
PRINCETON (39, not selected)
ST. MARY’S (40, not selected)
Wisconsin (41, 25)
SAN DIEGO STATE (42, not selected)
Cincinnati (45, 35)
Gonzaga (46, 44)
USC (47, 31)
VALPARAISO (49, not selected)
Wichita State (tied 49, First Four)
Pittsburgh (51, 37)
FLORIDA (52, not selected)
Just as important is the list of teams that were selected this year, but wouldn’t have made it using the RPI at-large system: Michigan (B1G), Syracuse (ACC), Tulsa and Temple (AAC), Vanderbilt (SEC), and Butler (Big East).
Courtesy: KCUR.org
In this experiment, the Committee’s selections helped teams from second-tier conferences (AAC and Big East). The RPI system would have helped teams from third-tier conferences (A10, Ivy, MAC, and Horizon).
The NCAA needs to change the way it selects teams for national profile tournaments. The Selection Sunday protocol is bad; the Football Playoff system is outlandish (right, TCU?).
Can the politics be taken out of Selection Sunday? Sure. All it takes is will.
