Fielding NCAA Tournament Bracket Using More Numbers, Less Subjectivity

With March Madness now underway, the sports world will shift its focus from the 2011 NCAA Tournament selection committee’s shoddy decision-making when filling out the bracket to something a lot more fun—actual basketball! But before the round of 64 begins Thursday and we all move forward, how about one solution to the problem that’s been bugging everyone for the past few days.

My boss (hey, Chris!) suggested this to me Tuesday night, and after taking a closer look, it actually makes a lot of sense: Instead of leaving this in the hands of the NCAA Selection Committee every spring, why not just let numbers decide who gets in?

Relying solely on math is always a little terrifying, and it wouldn’t be perfect, but it’d be a lot less imperfect than putting things in the hands of a bunch of possibly biased, possibly uninformed old men.

If you’re thinking that the bubble debate is part of what we love about the tournament, then don’t worry. The leadup to March would still be filled with intrigue, mainly because there’s no way to predict what the numbers will say about a given team. Look at how crazy the BCS rankings can get sometimes.

Plus, college sports will always be full of crazy people, so it wouldn’t eliminate all our favorite conspiracy theories, but it’d at least leave them looking properly ridiculous. With computers determining seeding and at-large bids, the only intervention necessary would be distributing teams among the regions. And really, even that could be randomized with a lottery.

“Okay, but how would we come up with a formula?” Glad you asked! How about just using the formula at KenPom.com? It’s universally recognized as more accurate than RPI and would have done a much better job seeding teams this year. It’d look like this:

No. 1s — Ohio State, Duke, Kansas, Texas

No. 2s — Pittsburgh, Kentucky, San Diego St., Purdue

No. 3s — Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Syracuse, Louisville

No. 4s — UNC, BYU, Washington, UConn

Sure, the Ken Pom rankings don’t penalize teams like Texas for swoons down the stretch, but isn’t the talent breakdown above much closer to reality than the seeds the selection committee came up with?

Take Florida’s two-seed, for instance. Of any top four seed in the field, Florida at number two is probably the most ridiculous. With Ken Pom setting the seeds? They’d be a six seed.

Sounds about right. Right?

As for all the at-large teams, it’s simple—after conference tournament winners, take the next best best 37 at-large teams in the KenPom rankings. Some years, that may reward power conferences, some years it won’t. But after UAB got in on the strength of a high RPI (31st) and got blown out by Clemson Tuesday night, maybe it’s time we start re-thinking which formulas we value most.

So before we put the 2011 selection process to bed for good, it’s worth taking one more look at all this. Because yes, the NCAA Tournament’s impossible to screw up. But the Selection Committee finds new ways to try every year, so maybe there’s a better way for us to do this.and it’s become a running sideshow next to college sports’ single greatest spectacle.