OK, besides the fact that it’s the small conference teams who make the early rounds of the tournament fun, I just have to comment on the statistical stupidity of Billy Packers now-famous selection Sunday comments, dissing the MVC and trying to pump up the major conferences.
The basis for this argument was essentially that the ACC (who only got 4 teams in) have sent a lot more teams to the Final Four and the Sweet Sixteen than has the MVC (who also got 4 teams in this year). Packer was also clearly interested in Cincinnati being excluded, making the argument that the Big East and other power conferences have also accounted for many more Final Four and Sweet Sixteen teams.
The response from the selection committee chair was that (1) selection was based on teams’ performance this year, not on results of previous NCAA tournaments, and (2) the selection committee assesses individual teams, not conferences. These are pretty valid arguments on their own.
However, I wish the actual substance of Packer’s argument were directly addressed, because Packer’s argument is simply wrong, for two reasons.
First, the major conferences have sent one heck of a lot more teams to the NCAAs than have the minor conferences over whatever span it is that Packer would like to discuss. (This is the first time a so-called “mid-major” has gotten 4 bids in the same year, I believe.) So, even if games were decided by coin flips, the power conferences would have gotten far more teams into advanced rounds of the tournament, simply by the virtue of the sheer numbers. A conference sending six teams is more likely to have a team win four games than is a conference which only sends a single team, even assuming random outcomes. Anybody who thinks about this for 30 seconds should understand this, but apparently CBS rules prevent such consideration. A (slightly) better index would be games one per bid, not total games advanced.
The second thing Packer’s argument misses is that the power conference teams not getting in as a result of bids to the MVC are not teams like Duke and UConn. The MVC isn’t taking top seeds away, it’s taking away at-large bids mostly from the bottom half of the seeding. It’s mediocre power-conference teams like Florida State and Michigan who didn’t get bids, not the big boys like Villanova and UNC. How many of those power conference Final Fours and Sweet Sixteens Packer cited are from teams with #10 seeds?
Until Packer’s numbers are adjusted for number of bids given and seeding, they’re just meaningless statistics Packer is using inappropriately to justify his (and probably his employer’s) bias for big-name schools. And he never addressed the arguments made by the selection committee, he just repeated the same silly numbers. Angrily.,
I will agree with one thing, though; I have no idea how Air Force got a bid.