Shall we dance?

The only thing that makes college BB any less fucked up than college football is the tournament. But, not by much.

So who got snubbed? Who got a tug-job? The Big Picture offers Arizona vs St. Mary's vs Wisconsin. St. Mary's was denied because...small schools don't travel well, do they? I mean their fans' travel capacity, which could (smirk) have had something to do with it. It's not much of a surprise that one of them (Wisky) wound up in Boise, where it wasn't already sold out (when I looked for tickets a few weeks ago) and the other (Arizona), as a proven draw, was sent East. Don't forget, it's a circus.

I'm sort of an apologist for Arizona. But, you'll have a hard time convincing me that the Big Ten should have 4 teams in the dance, much less 7. As explained above, it is because they travel well, as, not only are their alumni all over the country, people that live in Big Ten country need little reason to want to get the fuck out of there for a few days.

After all these years, it's JUST occurred to me how, because they let so many teams in from the same conference (7 each from the ACC, Big East and Big Ten), they have to seed so that teams from the same onference don't wind up on the same side of a regional.

Given that no Big East team is seeded lower than 6th, they must have drawn a line in the sand at 7 teams. They probably could have dumped a couple of more teams into the dance. It's definitely pandering. This is like one of those family gatherings, where instead of your serviceable cousins (you're allowed to rut 2nd cousins, right...right?), you get stuck having to dance with your, old, fat aunt; every year, she looks older and fatter, but you can't get out of it. The Big Ten is your old, fat aunt.

In any event, I don't see the logic of letting at-large teams directly into the tournament while two conference champions have to win a play-in game. It should be Arizona vs Wisky (or similar) on Tuesday night.

So, how do we fix this? Let in more teams, of course. You can let in teams from smaller conferences that may have dominated the regular season, but faltered in the conference tournament, and some teams from mid-majors. That will surely take the total up, out of bitching-range. The third best team from a small conference, a middling mid-major, the 8th place team from the Big 10 can't say shit, because none can viably claim that they are better than one another.

Structure the tournament like the English FA cup, where the top teams don't play the opening rounds. I would have 76 teams in total. The first round starts with 24 teams. The second round would be 32 teams; 20 teams added to the 12 survivors. For the third round, 16 teams would be added to the 16 advancing from second round. The fourth round would be 16 more teams added to the 16 advancing teams, making for a 32-team, 5-round knockout stage.

That renders useless the already-pointless conference tournaments, which only reward the slackers for getting hot at the right time. I've also added two rounds to the dance, yet reduced the top teams' workload by one round. The bracketology douchebags at the worldwide leader will be jerking off all over themselves.