Just the Conference Champs

Way back when, the NCAA Tournament used to consist of only conference champions.  It was probably 1974 when they realized they had to include at-large teams.  That year, NC State won the National Championship and Maryland might've been the second-best team in the nation, but wasn't even in the Tournament because they lost to NC State in the ACC Championship Game.

That whole idea seems odd in this day and age.  Of course two of the best teams can come out of the same conference.  They usually do.  There was that span of like six years in a row where there was two teams from the same conference in the Final Four each season, and the Big East famously had three Final Four teams in 1985, the first year of the 64-team tournament.  There was another intraconference championship game in 1988, when Kansas beat Oklahoma.

We've also seen plenty of teams that came nowhere close to winning their conference title somehow emerge as National Champions.  Take UConn last year.  Or, an even better example, Syracuse's championship team in 2003, which finished fourth in the Big East.  Especially with the supersized leagues we have now, it's not uncommon to see the conference's last team standing not be the champion.  Or even the runner-up.

So what am I getting at here?  Well, I got to thinking today about what it must've been like when the conference tournaments really were make-or-break for everybody, not just the one-bid leagues.  Imagine how much intensity would've been added if that Wisconsin-Michigan State game on Sunday determined which of the two would get to represent the Big Ten in the Tournament?  I'm sure the one-bid leagues would love it if the big boys felt some of that same pressure.

If it was limited to just conference champions, the Tournament would be altered in a big way.  Just going by this year's top 16 seeds alone, we would've lost one 1 (Duke), a pair of 2's (Virginia and Kansas), two 3's (Oklahoma and Baylor) and all four 4's.  That's nine of the top 16 teams in the tournament!  We'd also be without such Tournament mainstays (and championship contenders) as Duke, Kansas, North Carolina, Michigan State and Lousiville, just to name a few.

Since there are 32 conferences, it would be easy for the NCAA to only invite conference champions to participate in the Tournament.  This, of course, will never happen.  But that doesn't stop me from hypothetically pretending it could happen.

I took this year's tournament field, eliminated the at-large qualifiers and re-seeded based on the existing seeds.  There are still four regions, but there's only eight teams in each and teams have to play one fewer game to get to the Final Four.  One big change would happen right off the bat.  With Duke out, Arizona becomes a 1-seed and the regions get moved around.  Kentucky goes from the Midwest to the South, Wisconsin goes from the West to the Midwest and Arizona goes to the West (where they were already going anyway as the No. 2 seed).

With all that in mind, here's what my 32-team, conference champions only 2015 NCAA Tournament bracket would look like (as you can see, it's not very appealing):

• SOUTH: 1-Kentucky vs. 8-Hampton, 4-Wofford vs. 5-Georgia State, 3-SMU vs. 6-Belmont, 2-Iowa State vs. 7-Coastal Carolina
• WEST: 1-Arizona vs. 8-Robert Morris, 4-Valparaiso vs. 5-UC Irvine, 3-Wyoming vs. 6-New Mexico State, 2-Gonzaga vs. 7-North Dakota State
• EAST: 1-Villanova vs. 8-Manhattan, 4-Buffalo vs. 5-UAB, 3-VCU vs. 6-Northeastern, 2-Northern Iowa vs. 7-Lafayette
• MIDWEST: 1-Wisconsin vs. 8-North Florida, 4-Harvard vs. 5-Eastern Washington, 3-Stephen F. Austin vs. 6-Albany, 2-Notre Dame vs. 7-Texas Southern

Aren't you glad this isn't actually what the Tournament bracket looks like?  It's kinda missing something without those at-large teams, isn't it?