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About Pods and NCAA favoritism


kwyjibo

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Roy mentioned the pod system creating easier paths for preferred teams but I need to mention the worse innovation set to debut this year:

Reseeding the FINAL FOUR!

Yep, that's right all your pool sheets will now be meaningless.

The NCAA will reseed the last 4 teams left in the tournament (another way of putting this is making sure that Duke has the easiest possible semi-final opponent). Yep, lets say UAB (as a 9 seed) makes a run to the final four and would ordinarily meet a fixed opponent (say Pitt as 3 seed) but now they will have to face the top seed (say Duke) instead.

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this has been talked about for years (especially in 1996 when #1 Kentucky and #1 UMass met in one game and #3 Syracuse and #4 Miss State met in the other). However, I think the decision was cemented when Dick Vitale and other commentators complained about how the top 2 teams in the polls, Kentucky and Arizona, would have to face eachother in last year's Final Four. Oh wait, that didn't happen!:7

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of course my annual rant whenever the opportunity presents itself is to dream of a 256 team tourney where the brackets are regionalized for the first two rounds, and then reseeded at the 64 mark. there would be no more "bubble issues".

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This is bad. How are you going to do your brackets? I agree with Roy the NCAA does everything to support the Dukes of the world at the expense of the smaller schools.The pod system is wrong this is wrong. The RPI rankings are wrong. The NCAA should be about fairness not about helping a few powerfull programs. It should be about wins and losses and how you do against teams you play not about your opponents opponent.

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I cannot find the basketball committee report that said they wanted to reseed. I am now thinking I may be wrong about this year as the format of the blank bracket at NCAA.org indicates a fixed final four.

I apologize but I read this awhile ago and it may have just been a "recommendation" and not a final decision.

SORRY! (Whether you like this idea or not).

Right now I cannot find any indication on the NCAA site that the reseeding will happen this year (but I know I read about there a few months ago).

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It was in fact a RECOMMENDATION (not as I very incorrectly stated at the top a fact for this year) that there is not a fixed East v. West//Southeast v. Midwest or some such format BEFORE selection Sunday.

http://www1.ncaa.org/membership/governance...Supp_8_MBKB.htm

Sorry!

Please note they also want to change the regional names from directional to city specific (i.e., "Boston" Region instead of "East" Region or "St.Louis" Region instead of "Midwest" Region).

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actually it has to be a progression of 2. i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512. any number in between will require some kind of bye somewhere to make it work.

if you had 356 teams, at the end of round one there would be 178 left, then the next round would get it down to 89 teams. who does team 89 play?

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what is obvious, yet amazingly the greedy ncaa avoids it, is that they SHOULD set this thing up to favor the underdog. it is obvious that the world loves the success of the underdog and the casual fans are the ones that make this tourney a success and when the "upsets" occur, the ratings go through the roof. you would think the marketing genius for the ncaa would have figured that out by now.

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