Why the NCAA Tournament committee’s selection system is foolish

On Sunday afternoon, Michigan State basketball was the victim of a foolish NCAA Tournament selection committee system, and here’s why.

When the 25-3, No. 2-ranked Michigan State basketball team is given a No. 11 position and No. 3 seed by the NCAA Tournament selection committee, it begs the question, “How much should these hypothetical selection systems, and the committee members who make them, be respected?”

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Committee members cite contrived terms describing their formulated system such as “metrics”, “quadrants”, and “calculated indicators”.

In addition to examining the strength of teams’ schedules, teams are rewarded for scheduling difficult non-conference games. This season, Michigan State faced three then-top 10 teams: No. 1 Duke, No. 5 Notre Dame and No. 9 North Carolina.

The underperformance of these teams makes MSU’s strength of schedule appear weaker, particularly Notre Dame’s. Had the Irish remained a top-five team, the conversation would be profoundly different. A team should not be punished for the underachievement of other teams.

A team’s conference schedule is also outside a team’s control and therefore undeserving of punishment.

A committee speculating a team’s performance in games is hypothetical and useless – even inappropriate. For example, an attempt to impartially evaluate a game’s margin of victory would require also speculating the opponent’s performance, and if that opponent is not a potential NCAA tournament team, the speculation falls outside the committee members’ responsibility.

Truly, a win is a win.

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When we honor a former national championship team, do we go back and speculate each of its tournament wins criticizing the team because it could’ve played better? Is a national championship team’s legacy minimized because of its margins of victory? Ultimately, all that matters in the tournament is winning. Therefore, winning should be all that matters when judging the regular season.

Other factors that influence a team’s strength of schedule are below the surface for some. For example, travel and time between games have long proven to affect teams’ win-loss records. Before beating No. 3 Purdue, Michigan State played and won five Big Ten games in 12 days, three of them on the road. But committee members are unlikely to consider this fact, as scientific as they claim their procedure to be.

The committee may not be ready to include in its process the strength of opponents in a team’s road stretch, number of games in number of days, and number of miles traveled. As more relevant factors are considered, the more the committee’s system is shown to be fragile and unreliable.

The AP poll should matter because it comprises a larger pool of opinions that form a more unbiased consensus. The coaches poll should matter because coaches have more first-hand experience. The two polls form a collective voice, and diverting so drastically from them portrays a we-are-smarter-than-you message.

Calculating technicalities in the name of the NCAA Tournament is a disgrace to the beautifully unscientific nature of college basketball. Consider the tens of thousands of casual sports fans, even children predicting winners based on team mascots, whose brackets embarrass the self-proclaimed experts’ brackets each year. Remember that a tournament bracket formed by a TV network’s prediction system will be busted within a couple hours.

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Because the magic of the tournament will be what happens on the court, committee members should consider themselves a necessary evil in organizing it. In attempt to be realistic, they should leave your scientific algorithms at home.