Creating the Bracket

With Selection Sunday tomorrow, the NCAA selection committee is currently hard at work picking teams, seeding them, and making a bracket for the 2012 Tournament.  It's certainly not an enviable task.  Everybody has their opinion on who should be in, who should be out, who should get what seed, etc.  Especially those who AREN'T on the committee.

Last year, the NCAA invited a bunch of media members and conference/school officials to Indianapolis for a mock selection.  That group came back with a tremendous amount of insight as to how the bracket is set up.  Most significantly, they were given the same tools that the actual committee uses in its difficult task of choosing the teams.  For the most part, this mock selection proved more than anything that the committee knows what it's doing (they're the only people who thought VCU belonged in the Tournament last year, and look what happened).

Among the things that the committee takes into consideration are RPI, strength of schedule (which is also one element of the RPI), quality wins, head-to-head results, team sheets (a breakdown of results against teams by RPI), and the national polls.  The things that the committee doesn't consider include past tournament appearances, previous tournament results by conference teams, conference RPI or conference affiliation.

I slightly disagree with that last one, though.  They can say that conference affiliation isn't taken into account, but, to a certain extent, it has to be.  Why else do committee members have to excuse themselves when a conference school is being discussed?  (Obviously to prevent a conflict of interest, but I think you see my greater point.)  The very fact that they play in a Big East or a Big 12 automatically gives a team like a Seton Hall or a Texas an edge over good mid-majors.  Because of the other teams in their conference, Seton Hall and Texas have to play stronger schedules than mid-majors.  That's not their fault.  It's not something that should be held against mid-major teams, either.  I'm just saying that a 25-7 record in the Missouri Valley Conference isn't necessarily better than a 19-13 record in the ACC.  Likewise, Washington was the regular season champion in the Pac-12.  Do you really see them leaving out the regular season champ in a power conference, regardless of their RPI?

There's obviously no limit on the number of teams from one conference that can make the Tournament in a given year, as evidence by the fact that the Big East got 11 teams in last year and is looking at 10 this year.  Conference affiliation also comes into play when placing teams in the bracket.  While they don't have a limit on how many teams from a conference can get in, they do have a rule that says the top three teams from a conference all have to be in different regions.  (I wish the women had a similar rule.)  That guarantees Kansas and Missouri or Duke and North Carolina or Michigan State and Ohio State can't be the No. 1 and 2 seeds in the same region.  If a conference is good enough to place two or more teams in the Final Four, more power to it. 

They also try to set it up so that teams from the same conference don't play before the Elite Eight.  Obviously when the Big East gets 11 teams in the Tournament, that's impossible, but you're not seeing it otherwise.  And when you do, the conference is probably going to get a 2-seed and an 11-seed in the same region or something like that, making it unlikely they'll meet.

But that's part of what makes the bubble debate so interesting.  The committee starts the process by determining 20-25 teams that should be in the Tournament regardless.  Throw in the automatic qualifiers and you're left with about 15-20 teams to fill out the rest of the bracket.  There are probably about 30 good teams that could fill those remaining spots, which gives us our "bubble."  That's where all of those factors I mentioned earlier come into play.  And, again, say that conference affiliation doesn't matter all you want, it's the first thing most people look at, so it has to at least be in the back of their minds.

Creating the NCAA Tournament bracket is a tough job.  We all think we can do it, but most of us have never sat in that room determining which 68 of 344 teams will be playing for a National Championship.  It has to be nerve-racking.  As much as we all think we can do it and would love it, I'm not sure we could all handle that stress.  Being a member of the NCAA selection committee has to be one of the most thankless jobs in sports.  And have I mentioned yet that none of these people get paid for doing it?