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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 5012085, member: 289"] I’m a guy who likes to re-imagine things and, typically, my ideas are not well-received. There are always many reasons why they are bad ideas, no matter how much I like them. But I post them anyway in case they might plant a seed in some people’s minds somewhere behind their aghastness. Even if it doesn’t, posting my ideas allows them to pass from my mind into the river of discussions on the internet and my mind can move on to other things. But don’t worry: the powers that be have never looked at one of my posts and said “Hey! Let’s do that!” I don’t like: - The meaninglessness of the post-season NIT, which hasn’t prevented it from continuing to exist. - The fact that games played in November and December seem to matter more than the games played in January and February. Traditionally, a basketball coach is building his team into what they are going to be in the first two months of the new year and the conference season is real measure of how good they are. - The fact that conference tournament winners get automatic bids but regular season champs don’t. - Play-in games and byes. 2-4-8-16-32-64-128. That’s what I appreciate. I also don’t like teams being in a division that they are never going to be able to win. About half of Division 1 should be in Division II. Either that or there should be four divisions as there are in football. (Of course, half of Division 1 in football should be back in FCS where they came from.) The problem is, it’s basically impossible to move a school down if it does not want to go, unless you create a mathematical system for moving schools up and down, like English soccer teams. But you’d have vote to do that and the hangers-on will vote against it, so that’s not part of this fantasy. Bad Steve Idea #1 Put an end to the unloved post-season NIT and turn the preseason NIT in a championship of Catholic schools. Here is a list of Catholic Schools that play Division 1 basketball: Boston College, Canisius, Creighton, Dayton, DePaul, Detroit Mercy, Duquesne, Fairfield, Fordham, Georgetown, Gonzaga, Holy Cross, Iona, LaSalle, Loyola-Baltimore, Loyola-Chicago, Loyola Marymount, Loyola-New Orleans, Manhattan, Marist, Marquette, Mount St. Mary’s, Niagara, Notre Dame, Portland, Providence, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Francis-New York, Saint Francis-Pa, Saint John’s, Saint Joseph’s, Saint Louis, Saint Mary’s, Saint Peter’s, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Seattle, Seton Hall, Siena, Villanova and Xavier. That’s 41 teams. Take the top 16 from the previous season, send them all the MSG and play all the games there in November. It could be used to raise money for Catholic Charities. The Cardinal of the NYC Diocese could present the winner’s trophy. That would be a heck of a lot more interesting than what we have now. Bad Steve Idea #2 For the NCAA tournament, I want to see every regular season conference champion and every conference tournament champion in the NCAA tournament. No more having the 25-6 champion of a one bid conference getting upset by a 15-16 team and having to watch them on TV in the Big Dance. Put both of them in. I’d base the rest of the tournament on conference standings, which would make the conference season and the conference tournament both part of the NCAA tournament. Conferences would get bids based on their regular season standings in a number based on the number of NCAA victories the current conference teams had earned in their history. The current one bid conferences would now be two-bid conferences because their regular season and tournament champs would both get in, (unless that was the same team). Other conferences would get bids for their second-place regular season team, or their top three or four or five, maybe six. I think it would require tie-breakers to determine who is #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, etc. to avoid suspicions that conferences manufactured ties to get more teams in. Here is the number of NCAA tournament victories won by the teams in each current conference, (totals only to save space): Atlantic Coast 661 0.18583 Big Ten 497 0.13972 Big 12 447 0.12567 SEC 401 0.11274 Big East 372 0.10458 Pacific Coast 362 0.10177 Atlantic Ten 143 0.04020 American 138 0.03880 West Coast 98 0.02755 Mountain West 79 0.02221 Missouri Valley 48 0.01349 Ivy 45 0.01265 Conference-USA 43 0.01209 Mid-American 33 0.00928 Metro Atlantic 21 0.00590 Patriot 21 0.00590 Big Sky 17 0.00478 Sun Belt 15 0.00422 Big West 14 0.00394 Horizon 14 0.00394 Southern 12 0.00337 Western Athletic 12 0.00337 Atlantic Sun 10 0.00281 Coastal 10 0.00281 Southland 9 0.00253 Southwest Athletic 9 0.00253 Ohio Valley 6 0.00169 Summit 6 0.00169 America East 4 0.00112 Big South 4 0.00112 Mid-Eastern 3 0.00008 Northeast 3 0.00008 That’s 3,557 wins. I’ve put the percentage each conference has contributed next to their total. I’d give the bottom eight conferences automatic bids for their regular season and tournament champion only. The next eight would get their second place team in. The next eight would get their their third place team in. The top eight would get their top fout teams in. That’s 32 conferences who would all get their regular season and post season champions in, potentially 64 teams. Eight conferences would get their second-place team in, pushing it to 72 teams. Eight conferences would get their top three teams in. Now it’s 88. Eight conferences would get their top 4 teams in, pushing it to 112. It would actually be less than that because the conference tournament would often be won by teams that already had automatic bids, but you’re not going to get it down to 64 teams so the NCAA tournament would have to expand to 128 teams to accommodate this. The entire division, (358 teams) should be ranked by each mathematical system and the results collated, (just like a poll of writers or coaches). The teams that don’t get automatic invites would be invited based on the math to fill out the field. No “blind resumes”, "quads" or “behind closed doors” decision making. It’s all conference standings, the conference tournament and the math. Teams would know what they have to do and where they stand. The math would then be used to seed them. We’ll need to go to 128 but that’s only 36% of the division, less than the 62% of football teams that go to bowl games and it’s only one extra round. You’re down to 64 teams after that one round. I know: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? But what if it can be done better? Now my mind can move on to something else. [/QUOTE]

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