Where is the money for such an expanded Tournament?

Most of the schools you'd take, given the winning record requirement would be smaller ones, the 2nd and 3rd place in those 1 bid conferences you complain about. It's just a nonsense proposal.

Only a change that increases revenue more than payouts, and one that improves the payouts to the top schools (the 6 major conferences) has any hope in hell of getting off the ground. This idea does none of that.

(08-08-2020 06:57 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(08-08-2020 06:09 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(08-08-2020 05:35 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(08-08-2020 02:15 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Here's a way to expand the number of at large places in the tournament without removing the low-major conferences from March Madness entirely.

There would be a total of 48 at large teams in the traditional field of 64. But, each of the 32 conferences keeps its autobid. How?

Three tiers of autobids, determined by how many wins a conference's teams have had in the past 10 NCAA tournaments.

Rank the 32 conferences 1-32, from their current teams' most March Madness wins in the last 10 years to least. Three tiers: 1-8, 9-16, and 17-32. Conferences 1-8 have their autobid winner go directly to the traditional field of 64 teams. The autobid winners of conferences 9-16 would have to win one game to advance to the field of 64. The autobid winners of conferences 17-32 would have to win two games to advance to the field of 64.

The 16 conferences whose teams have won the fewest March Madness games in the last 10 tournaments, ranked 17-32, have their autobid winners paired off with another 17-32 conference's autobid winner for a game played on the second Wednesday in March.

The 8 winners of those games move on to a game on Saturday, three days later, each of the Wednesday winners playing an autobid winner from one of the conferences ranked 9-16 in the ranking of most March Madness wins in the last 10 tournaments.

The 8 winners of these Saturday games advance to the traditional field of 64 teams that starts play on the third Thursday in March.

The 8 conferences whose teams have won the most NCAA tournament games in the past 10 tournaments have their autobid team placed directly in the traditional field of 64.

The 1-32 ranking of conferences is then revised every year and re-ranked based on the total number of wins by teams in each conference over the most recent 10 tournaments.

A committee fills out the rest of the field of 64 with 48 at large teams. Teams that lose in either of the first two preliminary rounds would still be eligible to be selected by the committee as an at large team.

An interesting idea. I do have a few questions.

Would the preliminary games to determine which eight autobids move onto the round of 64 be played during the week when the top eight autobid leagues play their conference tournaments? If not, then a large number of teams would be idle for a week and a half before their first tournament game. That could impact their sharpness due to rust.

Who gets paid? Do the conferences whose autobid teams fail to qualify for the round of 64 get any money?

Would you consider using some method other than a beauty contest judged by a committee to select the 48 at-large teams?

How do you account for tournament wins by schools that have changed conferences during that 10 year period? Maybe using 5-6 years would reduce the significance of this issue. I could see how UConn winning the tournament while a member of what is now the AAC though they are now in the Big East could determine whether that conference (AAC) makes the Top 8 autobids or not.

1) This is answered above. The traditional round of 64 begins on the 3rd Thursday in March as always. The first prelim round is played on Wednesday of the previous week; the second is played on Saturday the week before the round of 64. The top 8 leagues would thus be free to play a conference tournament that ends the same day as the second prelim round, if they want to. The other 24 leagues would have to end their conference tournament a week earlier.

2) I'm sure they'd fight over the money and come up with a compromise that is grudgingly agreed to. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3) Doesn't matter that much. The committee would probably rely on computer metrics for nearly all of the picks like they do now, and the difference between the committee's picks and a pure computer-driven decision would be at most the last 2 or 3 teams out of the 48 at large.

The 4th question is the most difficult. Depending on the answer the #8 team would be different if you used a five year period. If you credit the win to whatever conference the school was in at the time the tourney was played, the MVC would be #8 and the AAC #9 because of Wichita State's five wins (out of 11 total) while they were in the MVC.

If you use 6 years, the AAC gets the benefit of 6 wins by UConn (now in the BE) and 2 by Louisville (now ACC) in 2014.

Over the past 6 years, the top 8 conferences by tourney wins accounted for 84% of all wins (336/402). The P6 accounted for 76%. The bottom 16 conferences had a total of 17 wins.

The past tournament performance belongs to teams, not conferences, because measuring current basketball strength in each league is the point.

As one example, Maryland's recent tournament success, whatever it was, should be counted toward the total for its *current* conference, the Big Ten. The only purpose of the 1-32 ranking is to measure the *current* strength of each league.

(08-09-2020 05:20 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Where is the money for such an expanded Tournament?

Most of the schools you'd take, given the winning record requirement would be smaller ones, the 2nd and 3rd place in those 1 bid conferences you complain about. It's just a nonsense proposal.

Only a change that increases revenue more than payouts, and one that improves the payouts to the top schools (the 6 major conferences) has any hope in hell of getting off the ground. This idea does none of that.

Actually, there would be fewer schools from those 1 bid conferences, not more. This year there would have been 57 teams from the P6 (compared to their average of 41 a year now). In addition there would have been 24 teams from the next four top conferences (A10, AAC, MWC and WCC), and only 15 total from the other 22 conferences.


EDIT: This model involves 24 more games in the play-in round. They won't be nearly as valuable as the games in the later rounds, but they are worth something. That additional revenue could be earmarked for the NIT prize pool.

The big difference in the revenue split comes from the reduced participation payout. Currently, 68 schools earn one unit just for being selected, worth $1.65 million, paid out over six years. In my 96 team model, each team earns only $500K for qualifying for Round 1, paid out immediately.

That difference in cost could shift about $64 million to the performance pool, paid out to the winners of the 63 games in rounds 2-7. That means the value of each unit is about $2.7 million, and the P5 conferences have 15 more teams competing for those wins. So they should expect to earn considerably more in this model than the current one unless they underperform on the court.

Potentially, the likelihood of more tournament games involving P6 schools could also increase the value of the next contract. And, depending on how hard the P6 conferences want to push the threat of starting their own competing tournament, it's possible that a higher percentage of the contract could be allocated to the NCAAT and NIT prize pools at the expense of the pool that is distributed to all member schools based on criteria like number of scholarships issued.