March Madness Selection Committee's Choice of Bracket

March Madness is my favorite time of year. Nothing else in the way of sports matches the excitement, intrigue, and unpredictability that the NCAA men's basketball tournament brings. As a passionate sports fan, one of the things that I've always loved the most are upsets. I simply love watching the little guy rise to the occasion and defy the odds by beating a team that, on paper, is far superior. Go back five years, for example, to the first round of the 2005 NCAA tournament, where 14th-seed Bucknell stunned the nation by defeating what was a vastly superior Kansas squad. Nobody in their right mind would have predicted that upset -- but it happened. And that's what makes sports so great: on any given day, any team has a chance, no matter how remote. Sounds cliched, but it's true.

Which is why I am, once again, extremely frustrated by the bracket that the selection committee unveiled for March Madness 2010. In recent years, I, along with any other sports fan who cares passionately enough, have noticed a disturbing trend: the committee, it seems, tries to eliminate mid-major teams -- especially teams that have decent chances of making cinderella runs in the tourney -- by pitting them against each other in the first round.

Coincidence, you might say. Well, I have my doubts. Main reason? Consider a first-round seeding match-up -- say 6 vs.11, or 5 vs. 12. There has been an unmistakable trend where the selection committee pits 2 mid-major teams against each other...while having two teams from traditional power conferences with the same seeding match-up also play each other. The reason this last part is important is because it shows that, in many cases, the committee has had a choice of whether to pit mid-majors against majors or mid-majors against each other -- and has consistently chosen the latter. To make this clearer, let's look at the past 5 years, where there has been at least one case per year of this phenomenon:

-2005: Utah vs. UTEP (6 vs. 11 match-up #1, mid-majors ); Texas Tech vs. UCLA (6 vs. 11 match-up #2, power conferences)

-2006: Nevada vs. Montana (5 vs. 12 match-up #1, mid-majors); Syracuse vs. Texas A&M (5 vs. 12 match-up #2, power conferences)

-2007: Butler vs. Old Dominion (5 vs. 12 match-up #1, mid-majors); Virginia Tech vs. Illinios (5 vs. 12 match-up #2, power conferences)

-2008: Drake vs. Western Kentucky (5 vs. 12 match-up #1, mid-majors); Clemson vs. Villanova (5 vs. 12 match-up # 2, power conferences)

-2009: Gonzaga vs. Akron (4 vs. 13 match-up #1, mid-majors); Washington vs. Mississippi State (4 vs. 13 match-up #2, power conferences)

Why is this important? It's simple. Obviously, each year the NCAA tournament has a lot more teams from major BCS conferences in it than it does mid-majors. So for every instance in which the committee decides, "Let's have two mid-majors play each other in the first round," it ensures that there will be one less mid-major possible of making a deep cinderella run in the tournament.

The committee continued that trend this year. Richmond vs. St. Mary's (mid-majors) makes up one 7 vs. 10 match-up, while Oklahoma St. vs. Georgia Tech and Clemson vs. Missouri (power conferences) make up two of the other 7 vs. 10 match-ups. Even more significant, Butler and UTEP play each in a first-round 5 vs. 12 match-up, and they just currently happen to be two of the most formidable mid-major squads in the country. Gary Parrish of cbssports.com saw this for what it probably means, writing the following in his March Madness column this past Monday:

"The plan is to make the good non-BCS teams eliminate the other good non-BCS teams: I suppose (or at least I hope) it's a coincidence, but it seems every year one of the non-BCS teams most likely to make a run in this event gets paired with another non-BCS team that's likely to make a run in this event. This year's best example is a first-round game in the West between Butler and UTEP. I said last week that the three non-BCS schools with the best chance to make the Sweet 16 were New Mexico, Butler and UTEP, and now either Butler or UTEP is guaranteed to have its season end Thursday because of an unfortunate pairing."

Hmmm. Makes you wonder about the committee's intentions, huh? After all, it's no secret that teams from major conferences generally create more viewership, and thus, revenues, than mid-major schools. Casual fans are more likely to tune into a game involving traditional powerhouses like Duke or Kentucky than one involving, say, Siena, a small Catholic school with only a couple thousand students. Could that have been on the committee's mind as they were determining the first-round match-ups? Did they intentionally create the bracket to minimize the chances of a talented but not-sexy-for-ratings-purposes mid-major making a deep run in the tournament?

Again...makes you wonder.