Why automatic bids should be eliminated

by **FeartheQ** » February 17th, 2012, 2:16 pm

I posted this on Bearnation and I wanted your take as well.

This is an insider article that Jay Bilas wrote this week. It is a great article that talks about how we strive to be "fair" by giving auto bids to teams from small conferences, but we actually hurt the tournament by not letting the best 68 teams play in the tourney. Some may think it is fair to have the 30th best conference to have a spot in the field, but is it fair to have the 38th best team in the nation miss the dance because a team like Savanna St. wins their conference tourney and would finish somewhere ranked around 195 at the end of the season?

Here is an excerpt from the article:

"In my mind, there is no problem with awarding NCAA tournament spots based solely on merit. The elimination of automatic bids would have no effect on true competition. For those who argue that it would affect the players on the MEAC or SWAC champions unfairly, that ignores the unfair impact on the players of far better teams such as Wichita State, Missouri State, Colorado and Harvard -- all of whom were left out last season. Are we to believe that proponents of student-athlete fairness and competition are fine with unfair impact on select athletes instead of one standard for all who choose to compete in Division I?"

For ESPN Insiders here is the link to the article

http://insider.espn.go.com/mens-col...n ... c-bids-ncb

Thoughts?

**Sponsor**

by **valleychamp** » February 17th, 2012, 2:31 pm

We don't need to eliminate auto-bids altogether. We need to eliminate auto-bids from the garbage conferences at the bottom of D1. Their are FAR too many D1 basketball teams.

Not to mention, if we eliminated auto-bids altogether, a conference like ours could potentially have zero teams in the tournament on a given "down" year. They will always find ways to allow teams like Illinois or Arizona in with 18-12 records.

by **unipanther99** » February 17th, 2012, 2:36 pm

"Garbage conferences" are in the eye of the beholder. If we get rid of the low majors, we BECOME the low majors and it's only a matter of time before we are eliminated.

The NCAA tournament is a rare thing of beauty in the sports world. Why anyone wants to mess with it is beyond me.

by **DoubleJayAlum** » February 17th, 2012, 2:47 pm

Cut the SWAC and the MEAC as they are not really legit D1 conferences and don't even pretend or attempt to be. Other than that, keep the autobids. Doing away with them is only an attempt to get more BCS conference schools in...

by **Haha** » February 17th, 2012, 2:48 pm

Bradley is the only recent example of a valley tourney champion who would not have gotten in on it's own merits. Missouri St would have gotten in that year however and would have been even. I believe last year Mizz St. and WSU would have gotten in, but Indy wouldn't have obviously. Still a +1 result. Another example is when CU/UNI tied but I believe UNI won the tourney, both would have gotten in that year, another +1.

Sure it would mean more mediocre BCS schools get in but it would mean more higher level MIDS would get in as well. It would be a positive for the Valley.

Also...Yes they should trim back D1, it is too large.

by **FeartheQ** » February 17th, 2012, 2:56 pm

There are generally more Valley schools around that 55-68 rating spot than in the top 38 (as you can see by recent 1 bid seasons). So in this certain scenario it would be a positive for conferences ranked 7-10. I do wish they would cut a few conferences out of division 1 though.

by **DoubleJayAlum** » February 17th, 2012, 2:59 pm

Haha wrote:Bradley is the only recent example of a valley tourney champion who would not have gotten in on it's own merits.

When did Bradley win the tourney? I don't remember that at all....

by **Ace Dad** » February 17th, 2012, 3:30 pm

valleychamp wrote:We don't need to eliminate auto-bids altogether. We need to eliminate auto-bids from the garbage conferences at the bottom of D1. Their are FAR too many D1 basketball teams.

Not to mention, if we eliminated auto-bids altogether, a conference like ours could potentially have zero teams in the tournament on a given "down" year. They will always find ways to allow teams like Illinois or Arizona in with 18-12 records.

Anyone who refers to other conferences as "garbage" has drank too much MVC koolaid.

My BCS buddies look down their nose at the MVC.

I have no problem with the winner of a lower tier conference "dancing."

The #38 team should have won their conference.

by **Wufan** » February 17th, 2012, 3:33 pm

FeartheQ wrote:There are generally more Valley schools around that 55-68 rating spot than in the top 38 (as you can see by recent 1 bid seasons). So in this certain scenario it would be a positive for conferences ranked 7-10. I do wish they would cut a few conferences out of division 1 though.

I'd be okay if the bottom 5-10 conferences played in some sort of a "B League" each year with the bottom conferences each year not earning an automatic. Basically, there are some very watered down conferences that really shouldn't be D-I. They need to step up or step down. I really like the Auto-Bid system though. Who was it that won the Big East a couple of years ago by winning 5 games in 5 days? That's a great story. I think it's important that if you ARE a D-I conference that you have the opportunity to play for a national championship.

by **Haha** » February 17th, 2012, 3:38 pm

DoubleJayAlum wrote:
Haha wrote:Bradley is the only recent example of a valley tourney champion who would not have gotten in on it's own merits.

When did Bradley win the tourney? I don't remember that at all....

holy crap you are right...they just got to the tourney championship.

So then even more of an argument for it being a positive for the Valley as they would have gotten 5 teams in that year.