At the time I write this, it is just before the start of the second week of 'March Madness.' The first week of the NCAA Men's (and Women's) Basketball Tournament was highlighted by upsets, including what many consider to be the largest upset ever in the history of the tournament. Farliegh's narrow win over Purdue was only the second time ever that a number one seed had lost in the first round. The 'real' first round, that is. Such upsets are almost becoming the norm. Sure, there has usually been a few upsets every year, but I feel that they are becoming too common. While such Cinderella teams make for a good story, most cannot maintain that momentum to become champions. Furthermore, having such smaller teams go far into the tournament can ultimately lower ratings, as the market to watch a small team cannot compare to many of the larger schools. The problem lies entirely with the way the tournament has been seeded for the last few years. See, the NCAA expanded the field to include sixty-eight teams, up from the previous sixty-four. However, these extra teams are not treated the same. Instead of having the four extra teams play each other, the NCAA chose to have four of the teams that received automatic bids from their conferences go up against each other for two of the sixteen seeds, while the other four teams vie for an eleven seed. Basically, this invalidates two of the automatic bids, usually those to smaller conferences, so that the bigger, so-called 'power' conferences can have the remaining spots. These bigger conferences had averaged five or six seeds per tournament, but they now can easily have up to eight with this rule. This is leading to the planning commission to undervalue the smaller conferences' teams. Just because the competition is not as strong, that does not mean the players and teams are not good. For instance, the eighth best team in the Southeastern Conference, Mississippi State, failed to win their play-in game. Farliegh did win their game and managed to upset Purdue before losing to the ninth-seeded Florida-Atlantic. By focusing more on the power conferences, and placating their large markets, the commission is not ranking the teams as well as they should. The balance of play is missing when the focus is taken off the smaller schools. Many of these small schools actually have great teams. Maybe not any future professional players, but still fairly high-caliber. Fewer upsets might happen if the notion of the power conferences dominance is removed. Take the women's tournament as an example. This marks the first year that the women's tournament went to sixty-eight teams as well. Previously, such upsets were rare, with at least three number one seeds making the national finals each year. Sure, the Southeastern Conference once had ten teams in the tournament, but that was mainly due to the overwhelming quality of a few schools during the heyday of Tennessee. This year will mark the first time that not all of the number one seeds did not make the Sweet Sixteen. This could be another sign that the matching of teams is unbalanced due to focusing one bigger schools, although this instance involved a power conference team (Indiana) losing to a mid-major school (Miami of Florida) and not a smaller school. Still, the correlation could be made on how seeding should be looked at to make such upsets less likely and competition fairer for small schools.
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