Here's how you develop a fair 357 team NCAA tournament
I've cracked the code. This is the answer. You are welcome, America.
As I’m sure every one of you has heard by now, the ACC coaches — led by the one and only Mike Krzyzewski himself — are making a push to get each of the 357 Division I teams invited to this year’s NCAA tournament.
OK.
You have my attention, gentlemen.
Logistically, this is going to be a nightmare, so here’s how you make this happen: Instead of hosting one, 357-team tournament, you need to break this sucker down into manageable parts.
Now, I think the first thing that we should do is divvy up the field based on conference affiliation. There are 32 conferences in college basketball, which just so happens to be a perfect number for a bracket!
It is so easy!
Each of the 32 leagues will have their tournament champion placed into the final field, and the bracket just breaks down so easi….
Oh shit.
I forgot about the Ivy League.
There’s no guarantee that they are going to play this year.
That complicates things here.
OK, I think I figured it out.
Before we play the actual conference tournaments, we have some form of conference-by-conference group stage. That way, we can get the teams within each league ranked in the fairest way possible, so the best teams have the easiest path to a title and the worst teams have the toughest path. But it also means that we can have some kind of large sample data set to be able to allow the metrics and tools we have at our disposal to determine who the best team in the country is. That’s the most fair way to fill the void left by the Ivy Lea…
Oh fuck.
The metrics won’t work across the sport if teams from the individual leagues don’t play each other.
OK, OK.
I got it.
For real now.
Before we play the conference-only group-stage, we hold a series of events early in the season to cross-contaminate the data sets. We can do things like have eight teams, all from different conferences, play tournaments in one site over the course of three or four days. If you include a losers bracket, it would allow each of the eight teams to play three games against teams from other league.
We can also do things like have conference-vs.-conference series, where two leagues have each one of their 12-15 teams play against another league. We can market this as well. I’m sure someone would pay to be able to pit one of these power conferences against another, a superficial, made-up competition for league supremacy.
Put enough of those together and we should be able to get enough of a data set before the conference bubbles so that the metrics can determine who the best team in the country is.
But since we’re here, no one wants to see a 32-team tournament when a 64-team tournament is just so perfect.
Six rounds over three weeks, and the bracket just fits so beautifully on an 8x11.5” piece of printer paper.
To be fair, though, we should put together a committee that features people across all leagues to objectively determine who the 33 teams are that get invited without winning their league’s championship. Hell, since we’re in the business of making money, we can allow that committee to put together the entire 64-team bracket and then have an hour-long show to unveil it.
I bet the ratings for that would be off the charts.
In other words, stop getting cute and just play the fucking season.