Penfield
a.k.a PencilForest
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 9,299
- Reaction Score
- 9,901
Every year we hear the same arguments - Team A was under seeded, Team B was over seeded, Team C and D shouldn't have to play each other. How many times have we seen a team that the experts called over seeded make a deep run? Or a dark horse pick flop in the first round? The committee seems to be incapable of seeding correctly, but at the same time the lines between a 3, 4, or 5 seed or 8, 9, 10, 11 continue to blur. It seems we are getting more 14 over 3 upsets, and lower seeded teams are making the final 4 at a pretty good rate. As much as we complain often times it doesn't seem to matter.
My proposal to fix this? Start picking the brackets in a manner that is somewhat similar to how the World Cup does.
Teams would be broken up into 8 groups. The idea is to make sure teams wont end up in the same group as other conference mates, and to keep the mid majors evenly distributed.
(In my example KState and USC have been removed because they were ranked lower in the NCAA ultimate seeding. I also dropped 2 of the 16 seeds. You could easily reincorporate them to go to 68)
Each group begins with a team from the "Favorite" category and a "Long Shot" After that they select one team from each of the remaining categories to create pods of 8. Other than Favorite vs Long Shot all other match-ups are randomized.
So now you have 8 pods. The Favorites are still seeded as 1s and 2s. Each 1 seed is randomly paired with a 2 seed and now you have your 16 team regions.
If breaking up by conferences doesn't make sense (seems to work well with this years group), you could do it by geographic region, or even break them up based on an S Curve.
All the committee needs to work out is the different groups and then where the teams play during the first weekend. You could have some behind the scenes ranking system that would help them choose which teams get to play closer to home etc. I think this would remove the suspicion that some of this is rigged to favor P5 schools, but also relieve the committee from having the make some very difficult decisions that will never make everyone happy. Just leave it all up to the bouncing balls.
My proposal to fix this? Start picking the brackets in a manner that is somewhat similar to how the World Cup does.
Teams would be broken up into 8 groups. The idea is to make sure teams wont end up in the same group as other conference mates, and to keep the mid majors evenly distributed.
(In my example KState and USC have been removed because they were ranked lower in the NCAA ultimate seeding. I also dropped 2 of the 16 seeds. You could easily reincorporate them to go to 68)
Each group begins with a team from the "Favorite" category and a "Long Shot" After that they select one team from each of the remaining categories to create pods of 8. Other than Favorite vs Long Shot all other match-ups are randomized.
So now you have 8 pods. The Favorites are still seeded as 1s and 2s. Each 1 seed is randomly paired with a 2 seed and now you have your 16 team regions.
If breaking up by conferences doesn't make sense (seems to work well with this years group), you could do it by geographic region, or even break them up based on an S Curve.
All the committee needs to work out is the different groups and then where the teams play during the first weekend. You could have some behind the scenes ranking system that would help them choose which teams get to play closer to home etc. I think this would remove the suspicion that some of this is rigged to favor P5 schools, but also relieve the committee from having the make some very difficult decisions that will never make everyone happy. Just leave it all up to the bouncing balls.