FanHouse March Madness

March Madness is upon us, that magical time of the year when the lure of upsets and successful bracket picks drives the American public into a frenzy. Its good entertainment, good sport, and fun. Its also just about as horrible of a postseason model as one could possibly develop and call itself a 'championship'.

That statement smacks of heresy but there's much truth behind it. Calling an event exciting and worthwhile doesn't exclude it from an assessment that its also failing to fulfill its actual, you know, purpose. In that regard the NCAA tournament is hardly alone, but it has gained a remarkably ridiculous reputation as a great championship and used to browbeat other sports like college football that actually have superior championships.

There was a time when February belonged to college basketball and the intricate puzzle of creating a 65-team bracket from a list of 340-some-odd candidates.

Then we got Rick-rolled by the steroid investigation.

So to get things where they should be here's a steroids tip that doesn't involve digging through someone's garbage:

Investigate the NCAA Tournament bubble.

If you're a die-hard NBA fan, the NCAA's can be a little trying. Not that there's anything wrong with swinging both ways. But when Kobe is out there making history and a lot of the world can't be bothered, something's not right.

Apparently, I'm not the only person who feels this way. The one, the only Phil Jackson thinks fans should have at least a little bit of respect for the Association in the month of March. The Los Angeles Times reports that during last night's Grizz/Lakers game, the hometown fans were more interested in watching Memphis/A&M than the action right in front of them:

As the Lakers and Memphis Grizzlies played Thursday night at FedExForum, fans erupted in cheers at inopportune times that had nothing to do with the antics of the Grizzlies' mascot.

Fans were simply watching the Tigers play Texas A&M in the NCAA tournament, a game shown on the scoreboard at FedExForum for the final minutes of the Tigers' 65-64 victory over the Aggies.

Jackson got peeved, seemingly out of principle, and demanded the game be taken down:

"I went to the scorer's table and said, 'That's not right,'" Jackson said later. "This is the game that's being played here. Delaney did the right thing."

Lamar Odom, who missed two free throws when surprise cheering broke out, had no problem with it. I can see both sides of it. It's like, if you you're that invested in the Tigers, don't attend another sporting event. But if Kobe's slicing up your squad, you probably need something to believe in.

Correction, sort of: They were showing the game, not just the score.

You'd have no idea by watching CBS' coverage of the Xavier-Ohio State game, but the ending of it was soaked in controversy. After a wild sequence of two Ohio State missed shots, Xavier pulls down a rebound with ten seconds left and a two point lead. Greg Oden is the nearest Buckeye to the ball and violently shoves the Xavier player out of bounds:



No intentional foul or flagrant foul was called. Xavier would miss one of two at the line, OSU would hit a game-tying three, and the rest is history. If the refs had decided a flying shoulderblock that sent a Xavier player into the photographers was a two-shot-and-the-ball foul we have a 9 over a 1. Instead we just have further evidence that the state of NCAA basketball refereeing leaves something to be desired. Like competence.

UPDATE: CBS just addressed this on their studio show; they did have a better angle that showed Oden could plausibly be construed as going for the ball. So it's a closer decision and the "competence" rip above was unwarranted. For livid OSU fans in the comments: yes, I'm a Michigan fan; no, I'm not rooting against OSU after last year's 3-6, Bill Simmons ripping on the league, the dual Rose/Fiesta fiascoes, and the torrent of negative publicity after the "open letter" Jim Delaney sent out. Win all you want; I just thought that was a really bad call. Still think so.

And now, a blatant attempt at some NCAA/NBA crossover.

The hardcore blog Gilbertology led me to this fascinating Toronto Star article on the rising popularity of number zero. Examples of players in this year's tournaments wearing 0 or 00 include Oregon's Aaron Brooks, Kansas's Darrell Arthur, and UCLA's Russell Westbrook.

Interestingly, none of them mention Arenas as their inspiration. But all of them give an explanation similar to Gilbert's well-known riff. And this quote from Westbrook is especially suspicious:

"That's it," said Russell Westbrook, who wears No. 0 for UCLA. "You go with the zero when you've been through something and you are looking to get a new beginning. It helps you get going again. It helps you get the swag back."

I know that wearing this number gives the illusion of standing out, being different, whatever. But when you're even jacking Gilbert's slang...I think it's time these guys start admitting who their zero hero really is.

On April 2, some team will cut down the nets at the Georgia Dome and be crowned the NCAA Champions. But the winning team won't be the only champ crowned that night. We at NCAA Basketball FanHouse will also crown the winner of our own bracket game, and you can join us.

You don't need to be an AOL member to participate, but you do need an AOL or AIM screen name. Once you have that taken care of, enter the FanHouse Bracket Challenge using this info:

URL: http://fantasywww.fanhouse.com/bracketmania/bpm/
LeagueID: 12267
Password: madness

When the Tournament is over, we'll anoint the winner the best bracketologist in FanHouse Nation with a blog post of their very own, so be careful if you use a pseudonym -- when you win, your friends might not believe it's you. But you can't win the worldwide acclaim that comes with winning if you don't play. So sign up now.

I don't know what happened in that committee room, but it looks like one person stood up and screamed, "Hey, the Big East sucks," and everyone else just believed him.

Georgetown got their 2-seed, and Pitt got their 3-seed, both of which are right in line with what everyone expected. Past that, though, the Big East was flipped over and done dry. Observe:

Marquette, ranked 18th in the AP, and 19th in the Coaches poll, is an 8-seed ... which presumably means that the committee felt like they were somewhere between the 29th and 32nd best team in the country. They even had an RPI of 22, and were pushed down to an 8-seed with a tough game against Michigan State.

Louisville's a 6-seed, despite being ranked 12th in the AP and 15th in the Coaches poll. The committee decided instead that they were somewhere between the 21st and 25th best team out there.

You could make the case that Notre Dame's seed is a touch low, though I wouldn't make a major argument about.

And all of this, of course, is beside the point that Syracuse was left out completely, something that I find to be completely beyond justification. West Virginia was left out, too, which is certainly understandable.

There were some top-heavy conferences out there this year (SEC, Big 10, ACC), but I didn't really feel like the Big East was one of them. They got treated like it, though.

When was the last time you said, even quietly to yourself, "You know, that was a really smart move by the NCAA."? Proactive, smart, thoughtful decision-making. Not words often used in discussing actions by the NCAA.

This is one of those times. The NCAA invited 20 members of the US Basketball Writers Association to come to Indy and pretend to be the NCAA Tournament selection committee for a day. They were given the same tools, resources and information that the committee has.

This was brilliant as at least 20 writers will now be very sympathetic and not complain nearly so much when the seedings are announced.

Take it from this wise guy: I have a new appreciation for the task. Thought I knew what it was like, and I actually had no idea.

We were given 10½ hours to do what the committee does in five days. Except it took us more than 12 hours, from Wednesday afternoon until early Thursday morning, with a short dinner break and a brief escape to watch the end of Duke-North Carolina.

When the going got bogged down, the NCAA staff helped seed many of the lower 45 teams -- and we still couldn't catch up.

That seemed to be the prevailing opinion of every article: this crap's really hard.

Now the only thing smarter, would be to round up 20 or so bloggers and fly them out to Indy for a crack at this.

Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News has a very good breakdown of the timeline of how they go through things. The whole thing even includes mock outcomes from the Conference tournaments.

Then they have their brackets (and here's a PDF version).

After the jump, the list of participating writers and their version of the events (if they've written one)

The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee has a hard job. No matter how they set up the field of 65, they know fans of the snubbed teams are going to complain that they're biased, incompetent, stupid, mean-spirited or all of the above.

So this year the committee got the bright idea of showing some prominent basketball writers just how hard their job is:

NCAA invited 20 members of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association to select, seed and bracket a 65-team mock field Wednesday, following the principles used by its 10-member selection committee.

The NCAA's goal was to demystify the selection and seeding process, said David Worlock, associate director of the Division I Men's Basketball Championship. "We're trying to make it more transparent."

Pat Forde says it was an exhausting process. Here are the seedings the writers came up with:

East
No. 1 North Carolina
No. 2 Kansas
No. 3 Pittsburgh
No. 4 Southern California

South
No. 1 Florida
No. 2 Ohio State
No. 3 Memphis
No. 4 Oregon

Midwest
No. 1 Wisconsin
No. 2 Texas A&M
No. 3 Washington State
No. 4 Butler

West
No. 1 UCLA
No. 2 Marquette
No. 3 Kentucky
No. 4 Duke

Discuss how biased, incompetent, stupid and mean-spirited they are in the comments.