Monster weekend in the world of sports, entertainment, and culture in the books - St. Patrick's Day was celebrated from San Francisco to Boston, Sammy Adams became a member of the OneTake Mafia, the leader of the short kings announced the commencement of short king spring, and the NCAA men's basketball tournament brackets came out last night for selection Sunday. The 68 teams vying for the national title and the degenerate gamblers awaiting to spend their bi-weekly paychecks on college kids they've barely seen play all year looked on with bated breath awaiting for their placement in the bracket.
The committee came out with their picks, and as always, some schools on the bubble left the day melancholy - their dreams of playing in an NCAA tournament were squelched at the hand of what we can only assume since we do not see their process is a group of old men in suits in some backroom smoking cigars in the midwest with analytics on myriad synchronized screens designed to confuse and frustrate the layman on strength of schedule and NET, amongst others.
This year seemed to be even more controversial than most, with disproportionate team representation from some of the top conferences, and the Big East in particular not getting the love it so sorely deserves. How the Mountain West with six finds twice as many teams in the tourney versus the Big East with three is a mystery scholars will be investigating for decades to come. But whether or not St. John's, or Providence, or Pittsburgh, or Seton Hall should or should not be in the tournament with at large bids is neither here nor there - and while I do believe they all should hands down be in a tournament with the 68 best teams in the country, it seems most are missing the heart of the problem here - the automatic bids.
Here is the list of the 32 auto bids for the 2024 bracket:
Nearly 50% of the teams who will be playing this Thursday and Friday are automatic bids. These are not handouts by any stretch of the imagination, the boys still need to get out and earn it by winning their conference tournaments - but if one goes through this list and asks 'who should be in based on the criteria for the at large bids?', I'd say 8-10 schools would actually quality.
Part of the fun of the tournament every year is seeing schools who do not get the same amount of fanfare or attention as the Big 6 conferences mixing it up with the powerhouses of college basketball and often holding their own, sometimes even winning a game or two. Who could forget the Dunk City run of Florida Gulf Coast in 2013 to the Sweet 16? Or George Mason making it to the Final 4 and taking out UConn in the Elite 8 in 2006? Legendary - and those teams would likely not be in the hunt if not for the automatic bids from their conferences. But with every George Mason or FGC, we have the Wagner Seahawks or the Samford Bulldogs losing by twenty and taking the spot from a legit team who could make it to a Sweet 16 like a St. John's or Pitt.
Been hearing chatter for a while now on tournament expansion, but I don't see the number of teams as the issue - if you want to make any amendments to the tournament, it's not expansion to 96 - it's consolidating some of these conference auto bids and making more at large opportunities. Should there really be an auto bid from the Sun Belt, the Summit League, and the Southern Conference each and every year? Money is of course a factor here, and I don't know all of the economics, but I don't see the real value - perhaps the mid-major conferences get ranked euro soccer league style and the auto bids only go to the conferences with the top 50% of the ranking, thus leaving 16 auto bids/season - thus incentivizing conference play to stay strong even with most teams within a given conference knowing they are unlikely to get that bid. What other postseason does this? Answer: none. Not saying these teams don't earn it, but Longwood, McNeese, Samford, and Stetson should be in over some of the top teams in an outrageously competitive ACC or Big East? What are we talking about? We all love to see the 15 seed team get to the sweet 16 - but it comes at a cost, and there are a lot of quality teams out there undoubtedly, but it needs to make sense.
As OneTake Media continues to battle through financial strife in its early days, I will indeed consider betting Producer Reese's bi-monthly salary and/or discounted upcoming Sartoro suit budget allocation on UConn to make it to the Final 4 once again, and indeed need that BC - USF NIT Final. In times of uncertainty, we turn to the experts we trust, and in this case that is the Tank himself - perhaps he said it best here:
Let the madness begin... Caitlin Clark will get her revenge on Angel Reese.
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