Over the next few weeks, there will be rampant talk about the bubble teams in college basketball. Analysts everywhere will debate which teams are going to be in the Big Dance for sure, which teams are on the bubble, and which teams have played themselves out of a bid to March Madness.
This is the part of the regular season in which college basketball fans tune in to see which teams play well (or badly) down the stretch to earn (or lose) a spot in the NCAA tournament field of 64 teams.
But for me, it loses some of its luster because you never know for sure which teams are bubble teams, which teams are locks to get in, and which teams have no hope.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
For all of its faults (and there are tons of them), the Bowl Championship Series does do one thing college basketball doesn’t. When the BCS standings are released each week, fans generally know which teams would be eligible for the championship game and which teams have a lot of work to do. The BCS standings give fans a chance to know which teams to root for or against, to get a decent approximation of what the BCS championship game and the BCS bowl games will look like.
So why can’t college basketball have the same thing?
Imagine if toward the end of the season, if a weekly poll, conducted by the members of the NCAA selection committee, ranked all 34 of the at-large teams that they would put into the tournament field (or 33 in women’s basketball).
This wouldn’t be a Top 25 poll like the Associated Press or the coaches vote on. This poll would exclude all of the teams that are in first place in their conference, or during conference tournament week, would exclude all of the teams that have won their conference tournament. This poll would just rank the teams that wouldn’t get automatic bids into the tournament, and would hold a lot of weight, since it was voted on by members of the actual selection committee.
We, as fans, would know which teams looked like locks to be in the tournament, and more importantly, we would know which teams were truly on the bubble and which teams needed lots of help to get into the tournament.
Think of how exciting the last couple weeks of the season could be with an official poll of at-large teams. The games played involving the last few teams on the list would become even more magnified. Fans of teams that were below the top 34 would know exactly who to root against. Fans of teams in the 30-34 range would approach each game with an added sense of importance, since they know a loss would doom their chances at getting into the Big Dance.
And while this might sound like more work for the selection committee members, it would actually be less work for them on Selection Sunday, since the hardest part of their jobs is picking the final at-large teams, not making the brackets.
Something needs to be done. I’m sick of hearing one basketball analyst argue that an arbitrary team is sure to be in the tournament while another analyst says that same team won’t be in.
The bracketologists across the country who do try to project the NCAA tournament field have as tough a job as there is in sports media. There are so many teams, so many conferences and so many factors to consider in the ultimate tournament profile of a team.
Having a weekly poll of at-large teams at the end of the season would give fans a more defined sense of what to root for or against, and make the end of the college basketball season infinitely more exciting.