Playing Field, Tilted

As the calendar flips to March, many of us eagerly await the annual exercise in corporate welfare with jump shots. The NCAA basketball tournament is the best event in sports, three weeks of competitive drama so compelling and entertaining that it’s easy to overlook the fact that it mirrors much of American society because it’s heavily gamed toward the privileged. 

Thirty-two conference champions and 36 teams selected at-large make up the 68-team NCAA field. The Power 5 conferences – ACC, Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, Pac-12 – and Big East make up the bulk of the bracket. Teams outside the Big Six must be exceptional for four months, or catch a spark for a week in March to make the NCAA field. Even that might not be enough. 

Whereas teams within the marquee conferences need be only marginally successful to get invited to the party. Upsets are routine. A St. Peter’s or Loyola of Chicago or Butler or VCU makes a run and provides a whiff of inclusion, and the NCAA is glad you think so. 

In the past decade, 264 of the 326 at-large berths went to the Power 5 conferences and Big East – that’s 81 percent. The remaining 62 at-larges (19 percent) went to the other 26 conferences. Now, you might point out that marquee conferences have more good teams and deserve more berths. And you would be correct. But the system is also set up to ensure overwhelming representation for the Bigfoot leagues at the expense of lesser conferences. 

The NCAA has long used statistical measures to evaluate and compare teams and conferences. The current NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) rankings are more comprehensive than the old Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), which was weighted toward teams’ and opponents’ winning percentages. NET rankings account for game results, strength of schedule, location of games, and quality of wins and losses. Games and opponents are assigned to four quadrants, based on level of difficulty. Quad 1 wins are most valuable, Quad 3 and 4 losses most damaging. Different metrics, same results. 

Analytic profiles are used more often to include power conference teams and exclude teams from lower-rated leagues. A seventh-place team in the Big 12 likely has a better statistical profile than a regular season champion from the Mid-American Conference with 26 wins. Is the seventh-place Big 12 team better than the MAC champ? Maybe. But does any seventh-place team deserve to compete for the national championship, while the MAC champ is snubbed by the selection committee because the league is low rated and they lost in their conference tournament? 

Sports are often held up as pure meritocracy, where ability and performance erase class divisions. Tell that to kids and parents who cannot afford the time and expense of travel ball that identify and nurture prospects, to the legion of qualified minority coaching candidates, and to most of those in the ecosystem of college athletics. Quality mid-major programs cannot schedule their way into a better statistical ranking and the at-large discussion, because power conference schools often won’t play them. There’s little benefit. A power conference school might lose to a quality mid-major. Better to schedule winnable home games in November and December, a snazzy early-season tournament, maybe a matchup or two against a fellow Big Six program, and then your conference slate elevates your statistical profile. 

The analytics guys and selection committee look at the 26- or 27-win Big Sky champ that lost in the conference semifinals and say, “Sorry, but your league and strength-of-schedule are too low. Numbers don’t lie.” They don’t lie, but they do dance, depending on who’s playing the tune. 

Conference realignment and consolidation will make it even more difficult for quality mid-majors to schedule up. Big Six leagues are moving toward 20-game conference schedules, which reduce openings for non-league games. That’s why coaches such as Tony Bennett at Virginia and North Carolina’s Hubert Davis deserve some credit. Bennett has scheduled home-and-home series with James Madison and VCU in recent years. Davis scheduled games against College of Charleston and UNC Wilmington, two of the Colonial Athletic Association’s best teams, and JMU this season. All at home, but still better than many.  

The 2011 Connecticut team is cited by some as justification for more power conference schools in the tournament. The Huskies finished tied for ninth in the Big East that season and had lost four of five heading into the conference tournament. Counter to form, they won five games in five days to capture the title and the league’s automatic bid, then all six NCAA games – 11 straight – for the national championship. However, that’s as much an outlier as VCU’s run to the Final Four. UConn at least earned its way into the NCAA field by winning the conference tournament, same as any scuffling conference mutt that gets hot in March. But the Huskies as plucky underdogs? Please. They and their Big Six brethren have access to money and resources of which most programs can only dream. 

There’s discussion of expanding the field to 96 teams, a truly wretched idea that falls into the category of “if some is good, more is better.” Critics argue that a larger field will devalue the regular season, though I’d point out that the regular season is already devalued to some degree. Many power conference teams that finish fifth or sixth get a mulligan and a trip to the NCAAs, while one-bid leagues know that one week in March decides it all. 

Advocates say that more deserving mid-majors will be included in a larger field. That’s almost certainly true, but I have no confidence that current proportions won’t persist, and we’ll see a bunch of 10th- and 11th-place teams from power conferences in the field. 

Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes said that he thinks an expanded field would allow more coaches to keep their jobs, a specious argument. Ask Rick Barnes how annual 20-win seasons and NCAA trips solidified his tenure at Texas. 

I don’t advocate revolution or even equal representation, you filthy Bolsheviks, but merely a few tweaks in the present system. A little less deference to the gated communities, whose residents already have plentiful advantages, and a few more rewards for those that merit. The changes wouldn’t impact more than a handful of teams per season. Any regular season champion with, say, at least 25 total wins gets into the NCAA field, even if it loses in the conference tournament. A team that did exemplary work all season shouldn’t be penalized for one off day or hot opponent in March, a more exacting standard than power conference teams face. 

Twenty-five wins may seem arbitrary, but no more arbitrary than an algorithm that inflates a team’s profile based on a few “quality” wins and the neighborhood in which it resides. Twenty-five is also a lofty enough number that it would eliminate many leagues’ champs from consideration and limit the howling from predictable corners. And if a one-bid league manages to get a second team into the NCAAs, the committee must choose between teams from the Big Six – separate the resumes of the fifth-place SEC team and seventh-place Big 12 team. No cherry-picking from the relatively few mid-majors on the bubble. 

These suggestions have approximately zero chance of being implemented, as committee members and decision makers are well aware on which side their bagels are schmear’d. Far less blowback for kneecapping Stephen F. Austin than, say, Indiana. Showcase marquee conferences and big brands. Just enough representation for lower-rated leagues to appear fair. Competition takes care of itself. Most folks are entertained and go home happy. As the kids learn, who gets screwed can make the how and why much more palatable.