Grant Wahl at SI.com writes that it's time for us to acknowledge the brilliant job done by the tournament committee in nailing the tournament's top seeds. I'm going to have to respectfully disagree ... I'm not thanking them.To say that we need to thank them now when most of the top seeds advanced would be to say that they should be criticized when things don't go according to seed. If the committee is right this year, the committee was very very wrong last year when 11-seed George Mason got the Final Four.
Do you believe that? Should the committee be chastised for not having Mason as a 1-seed last year? Of course not, that's crazy. Upsets happen sometimes, and no one can predict them. If you could predict them, they wouldn't be upsets.
And sometimes, like this year, upsets don't happen. It's just the way things go. It's not like it took some kind of supernatural brain power to have UNC, Florida, Ohio State, Kansas, Georgetown, UCLA, and Memphis among the top-8 seeds. And if it did, by the same token, it was spectacularly dumb to have Wisconsin in that group, too. But I didn't hear many people saying that when the brackets were announced.
I'm not giving any credit to the committee for this, just as I would never "blame" them if another 11-seed got to the Final Four.
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
I agree. The only problems people have with committee is the selection of 3 or 4 bubble teams. There's rarely any griping about the seeds. No one ever expects every lower seed to win.
I would never see any reason to pat them on the back. What are they really looking at? 8-10 teams at most? And those 8-10 rarely ever make a difference. For all we know, this stuff is all decided before the door ever shuts. And they could be in there watching stag films sipping Gin and Tonic. How does one get one of these jobs anyway?
The pat on the back should go to the referees this year. They played a major role in the top seeds advancing. Big money is driving the NCAA now. The NCAA will make sure that all high seeded "Power Conference" schools make it to the final four. This tournament is strictly money driven and that is a fact !!! The NCAA lost money last year, and made sure that it wouldn't happen again. CBS is also in on this. All you have to do is listen to their constant hype on how the NCAA comittee seeded wonderfully, how the big power teams advanced, and how their announcers (B. Packer) defended the controversial ref calls (while on air -and follow on during the next broadcast) that allowed these power schools and their revenue generating alumni (Ohio State, Kansas, Georgetown, North Carolina) to pour money into the tournament.