Reply to thread

Message

[QUOTE="cuse522, post: 2096121, member: 1149"]
A

It just depends how it's marketed. Right now the First Four isn't nearly as interesting as a bigger play-in could be. Just going to 76 would make it a lot better IMO.  Imagine taking the Last Eight In/First Four Out and the four best second place teams from all of the auto-bid conferences (or first place team if there was a conference tournament upset) by a set metric (RPI or whatever) and having them do play-in games for eight spots. Eight games, four locations (Let's say Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, West) , pod style on one night.

Right now, off Lunardi's bracket, that would be:

SOUTHEAST
1 Virginia Tech
16 College of Charleston (67th RPI)

8 Vanderbilt
9 Georgia Tech

NORTHEAST
2 Syracuse
15 UNC-Asheville (65th RPI)

5 Seton Hall
12 Georgia

WEST
3 Southern Cal
14 Valparaiso (64th RPI)

4 California
13 New Mexico State (62nd RPI)

MIDWEST
7 Marquette
10 Wake Forest

6 Providence
11 Rhode Island

The ratings would be good - you're going to get some good games in there, and every single team in this field is a threat to make the Sweet 16 if they win their play-in; they're all top-100 in RPI... That's in a down year for the bubble, too. It also takes away some of the punishment toward bigger schools from conference re-alignment, which is good for college basketball financially.

You don't think people would pay to go see any of those pods? Three of them would be sold out IMO. The Midwest might not because of the geographical locations of the teams.
[/QUOTE]

Verification

What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?