Look, the NCAA Selection Committee Chairman, Gary Walters, is a smart guy. He played basketball at Princeton, he actually was a basketball coach before eventually becoming Princeton's Athletic director. He does, however, think the public has no clue.Having watched far too much Selection Sunday specials and interviews with Gary Walters, I noticed he kept coming back to referencing this issue.
Q. When you added it all up and found six mid majors in there, were you and the other committee members surprised?GARY WALTERS: You know what's really funny is the impression that people have. Last year, if you'll recall, we had eight mid majors in the tournament, and the general impression eight at large mid majors in the tournament, 'so called mid majors,' with quotes. The impression out there was that the tournament committee had gone overboard by selecting mid majors. We were criticized to no end by any number of media with regard to that selection, when in fact there has been a range historically of mid major at large teams from basically five to 12. That's something that I didn't realize until I basically asked our own people to look that up.
When we start our process, we throw conference affiliation out the door. I know we repeat that, we say that. I think the writers that went through the mock selection a couple weeks ago had very, very similar experiences. I refer to it as tabula rasa, clean slate. That's the way we look at this. Then we start to compare and contrast.
It just shakes out where it shakes out. This year it happened to shake out with six at large teams from the so called mid majors.
One of the really neat things, however, about this tournament is the fact, and I think what makes it especially a quintessential Americana, is this balance, if you will, between the AQs, which I like to refer to has its roots in Jeffersonian democracy or Jacksonian democracy versus the at large teams which has its roots in Jeffersonian democracy.
One of the great things about this tournament is we have the balance between the two. I think that's what makes March Madness special.
[Emphasis added.]
And this was one of his more detailed explanation as to what he meant by Jeffersonian versus Jacksonian democracy.
It's an appealing notion and grandiose to play it out that way as a balance of two historical ideas of American Democracy. The problem is that the committee and Walters appear to have chosen the Jeffersonian ideal, while pretending to be neutral.
What he appears to be saying is that the automatic qualifiers (or AQs as he calls them) is the method of enfranchising a wider-base of the college basketball teams in the NCAA Tournament. Giving them the opportunity to participate in the competition for the NCAA Championship. This is presumably directed at the 25 other conferences that don't get the star players, media attention and focus that the 6 major conferences (whose conference champion would have been included in the field regardless of being an AQ) get. The teams, that if the Field was picked solely by merit and accomplishment, would not even be given a chance to participate.
The at-large teams are generally represented by teams of the traditional powers (or power conferences), Jeffersonian principles of the those that protect the integrity of the system for all. The elites who during the course of the season, have emerged as the best of the teams. Essentially, in the context of his answer to a question regarding only six mid-majors being included in the at-large, Walters is saying that he and the committee didn't find many teams from outside of the major conferences worthy of inclusion based on merit.
Judging by the way the committee seeded many of the "AQs" from outside the power conferences, it could further be inferred that the committee paid lip-service to Jacksonian principles of inclusion while doing what they could to be assured that the AQs and teams from mid-majors selected to the at-large group just happened to be paired off against each other in the opening round.
- Butler-Old Dominion
- SIU-Holy Cross
- BYU-Xavier
- Nevada-Creighton
