The NCAA Tournament Is Walking Away From Its Most Important Aspect: Drama
On Tuesday morning, the NCAA announced that it would release an in-season look at the current rankings of the top 16 teams on February 11. This is the first time in college basketball history that any current portion of the bracket would be unveiled to the public prior to Selection Sunday.
In an attempt to potentially maximize the hype for March 12’s complete bracket reveal, the NCAA might be doing itself a great disservice.
What makes the NCAA Tournament such an incredible sporting event is its drama and unpredictability. Though the bracket will obviously change in the following 29 days with regular season races and conference tournaments, it’s confusing as to why the NCAA feels that it needs to fix something that isn’t broken.
The postseason schedules/brackets for the MLB, NFL, NBA and college football (though it uses a committee to select bowl games, we usually have a decent idea of where teams are headed) are known at the second the regular season ends. It’s not the same for college basketball by any means. The 30 minutes or so between the final buzzer of the Big Ten championship to the beginning of the Selection Show is one of the great moments of the season. There is endless talk about nothing but which teams will be #1 seeds, bubble teams that might be in or out, and any other story that seems relevant. It’s great for the fans, and it’s great for the viewership for the Selection Show. Everyone is talking about college basketball and college basketball only for the entire day.
This won’t be completely tossed aside with a February bracket reveal, but the mid-season snapshot could cause problems. It will show how the committee weighs teams, most notably its importance on strength of schedule, top 50 wins, play on the road, RPI and so on. If the final bracket doesn’t appear to follow the same formula as February’s reveal, it will be an awful look for the NCAA Tournament selection committee, which receives endless attacks and public shame even when it produces a fairly respectable bracket.
Because there will be an hour long show regarding the current status of the bracket, why not reveal each of the 68 teams? This might be a move by the NCAA to save itself if it chose not to include a mid-major squad with a strong resume in the mid-February reveal, such as Monmouth or Valparaiso last year, both of which missed the NCAA Tournament. You can believe that wherever Gonzaga is slotted in February will be highly controversial. The college basketball world loves to build up and tear down the Zags, who happen to play Saint Mary’s that same night, its toughest remaining game.
The committee must follow the exact selection process for February as it does in March, or many questions will be tossed its way. There is so much potential for backlash from the public if the committee values teams differently on Selection Sunday.
The NCAA is clearly setting itself up for failure.
Hopefully this isn’t a move to compensate for last year’s Selection Sunday debacle, but it definitely isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Last March, the NCAA moved from one to two hours for the bracket reveal. The event that was an absolute dumpster fire, which included a leaked bracket about 45 minutes into the show, an incredible blessing for those who couldn’t muster the strength and courage to sit through what seemed to be an improvised event. For a large amount of the 120 minutes, Ernie Johnson had the task of teaching Charles Barkley how to conquer the touch screen, which was used for selecting teams after each region was announced. Barkley, unsurprisingly, went chalk for almost the entirety of the regions he selected, which seemed like the safe play for an analyst that follows college basketball for only three weeks out of the calendar year.
The whole event was a mess, and it felt as if the studio analysts were aware of it as well. Changing the elements and schedule of the show seemed forced and unnecessary. Fans immediately longed for the days of Greg Gumbel quickly pushing through the bracket, naming off teams, occasionally showing a live clip of the team’s players celebrating, and then going to the studio analysts for a 5–10 second tip on the region. It seemed effortless and was the best possible use of the 60 minute time slot.
Let’s face it. At some point in the near future, the NCAA will have a bracket show every week. Similar to ESPN’s College Football Playoff rankings each Monday, Turner will hope it can grab weekly attention regarding its postseason rankings, while completely derailing a once-perfect system.
In this current generation where attention and speculation is sacred, it appears that the NCAA is slowly walking away from what makes its playoff system so great. If last year’s Selection Show was any indication, February’s event might be even more painful. Two hours for 68 teams was far too long last March. I can’t even imagine anything more than a half hour for February’s 16-team reveal.
But at least a few dollars are made in the process.
