The NCAA Tournament continues to be weighted toward the larger conferences. It's not surprising given the rich-get-richer scheme run by the BCS, but in basketball it's next to impossible for a mid-major anywhere to earn a berth without winning its conference tournament. As SI.com reports: "Only four teams outside the power conferences earned at-large bids: Butler, Xavier, Dayton and BYU. Only the Bulldogs are truly considered a mid-major, so what we have is a bracket with just one mid-major at-large team. This is sad." (Of course this expansive look at the tournament does not once mention the words "Akron" and "Zips.")
The NCAA's rich-get-richer operation
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Sure, it's sad. What it isn't, is surprising. There is way too much money involved in The Tournament, for the NCAA to take risks on nationally unknown programs. If it wasn't for the inclusion of the conference champions as automatic bids, the entire event would be a basketball version of the Bowl System. But it is the presence of the Cleveland States, the Radfords, and the Cornells that have made it such a non-sports-fan event, like the Super Bowl.
Americans love an underdog, especially in sports, and even though we all know that the 15th & 16th seeds have a snowball's chance in Perdition, its that hope that pulls in people who think scoring in the paint involves Sherwin-Williams.
You're wrong. It was just as eventful when there were 32 schools instead of 65. There have always been underdogs, even when UCLA was mowing down everybody in its path. Nobody cares about the inclusion of schools like Radford. Nobody is more interested in the tournament because Cornell is in it. And I roll my eyes whenever guys like Bobby Knight assert that the tournament should be expanded to 128.
The reason it is such an "event" is because the way CBS took it from the other networks and, in tandem with the NCAA, ingeniously lengthened and successfully marketed it to fill their coffers. Pure and simple.
The reason it is an event is because it's easy to gamble on it.
And in a season where Akron "earned" it's spot in the tournament by winning the MAC tournament as a five seed, it's hard to argue that the way the committee creates the bracket is any more unfair than the way that the conferences award their automatic bids. I don't hear Akron fans crying for Bowling Green or Buffalo despite the fact that those teams were better for a five month period, rather than just for a long weekend.
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