A flawed system

You've probably heard the old saying about it being hard to screw up breakfast.

So think of the NCAA Tournament and what made it great as three scrambled eggs, sausage, grits and toast on a Saturday morning.

It's hard to believe, but the powers that be are finding a way to mess it up. There's an increasing number of shells in the eggs. Some of the sausage is raw in the middle. And the grits don't have any butter or salt. And the service stinks.

Check, please.

The folks who don't want a college football playoff have always presented an argument that there will always be controversy because someone will be left out whether it's a four-team playoff, an eight-team playoff or whatever. They point to the controversy that follows the unveiling of the basketball tournament field every single year and say the same thing would happen in a football playoff.

My argument to that has always been: Sure, there's some bickering on Selection Sunday. But it all stops once the games commence. And at the end of the basketball playoff, no one is moaning and complaining about the bubble teams that were left out.

It's becoming harder and harder to use that argument. Harder and harder to view the NCAA Tournament as something as close to perfection as you can get.

Before you get to the highly questionable selection process that excluded Virginia Tech and Colorado, we need to call into question a highly questionable tournament format that was instituted this season as the NCAA adopted the 68-team format.

Someone please explain to me how Hampton and Boston University are already in the "second round," while four unquestionably better teams (Clemson, UAB, Southern Cal, VCU) are stuck playing in the "first round."

To reach the Final Four, Hampton and Boston would need to win four games. Clemson and its aforementioned counterparts would need to win five.

The only defensible way to conduct this "First Four" arrangement is to stage it among the worst eight teams in the field. But you don't generate any ratings that way, so Hampton and Boston U. get a pass while other teams have to play for the right to be distinguished as an 11 or 12 seed.

Clemson really shouldn't be complaining about anything right now, for reasons that Brad Brownell articulated yesterday after learning the Tigers were in. But the Tigers' predicament magnifies the flaws in this new framework.

Brownell's team is in a difficult position to begin with, flying to Dayton today and playing UAB tomorrow. But no real complaints with that arrangement.

The fundamental problem rests in what happens after tomorrow night's game. Tip-off is shortly after 9 p.m., so the winner probably takes a red-eye flight to Tampa somewhere after 1 a.m.

Thursday's game against West Virginia is at noon, and the NCAA typically arranges its day-before practice schedule to reflect the game times. So unless changes are made to give Clemson/UAB some time to rest, Clemson/UAB will be faced with getting to bed somewhere around 4 a.m. and then practicing at 10 a.m.

Then Clemson/UAB gets to face a West Virginia team that's well rested.

Speaking of West Virginia, Kentucky probably has some questions about this arrangement as well. The Wildcats are seeded 4th, one spot ahead of the fifth-seeded Mountaineers in the East. Yet West Virginia gets favored status in the form of facing a team coming off one day's "rest," while Kentucky's first opponent (Princeton) didn't have to emerge from the "First Four."

It's all confusing and confounding. And when you get the lame explanations we heard last night from Gene Smith as he defended some of the inclusions and exclusions in this tournament field, it makes you wonder if the real madness of March is occurring before the first ball is tipped.

Makes you wonder how much Smith's attention was diverted with that little scandal unfolding in Ohio State's football program. When a person who presides over a process cannot speak in an informed and non-contradictory fashion about that process, then the process is questionable and dubious.

Had the pleasure of speaking with former Alabama coach Wimp Sanderson last week at the ACC Tournament. He was working the tournament as a radio analyst, and I joined him for lunch Saturday.

Sanderson expressed some real concern about expanding the NCAA Tournament. He knows there's a major movement among current coaches to push the field to 96 teams and probably more, and he can't figure out how that's good for the health of college basketball.

"If they do that, you might as well cancel the ACC Tournament and all the other conference tournaments," he said. "Hell, just go ahead and cancel the regular season."

This is still a fun and compelling event, and there won't be nearly as much grousing after the games start.

Slowly but surely, though, these cooks are finding a way to mess up breakfast.

LW