College Basketball

This should piss off fans of teams in mid-major college basketball conferences.

The West Coast conference has signed a new agreement with ESPN for various sports coverage through 2011. For the most part, it seems to make sense – 10 games on ESPNU per year between all sports, for example.

But then there’s the seven intra-conference college basketball games, each year, split between ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC, plus the semifinals and finals of the WCC tournament. That doesn’t make so much sense.

It should be obvious this is entirely because of the success of Gonzaga. Exactly two WCC games on ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC this season covered the Zags – one of them being the other conference semifinal – out of 11 all-WCC. But what, exactly, is the rest of the WCC doing to deserve such national attention?

I’ve seen people look at the WCC’s conference RPI and declare them to be in the top tier of mid-major conferences. This year the WCC is the 14th-highest rated conference in all the land in a down year for the Zags, according to kenpom.com. Factor out Gonzaga, and they fall to 17th – behind the MAC, Patriot League, and Big West.

Last year, the only non-Big Six conferences the WCC didn’t beat were the MVC, MWC, WAC, CAA, and A-10. But factor out Gonzaga in a year they were RPI #10, and the WCC falls six spots – below the C-USA, MAAC, Horizon, MAC, Big Sky, and Sun Belt. It’s evident that the WCC without Gonzaga is near the top of the second tier, and in fact, in 2005 the WCC was behind only the Big Six, the MVC, and the pre-Big-East-robbery C-USA – after factoring out another banner year for the Zags.

But seven WCC intra-conference games? Including spots on ABC, which barely shows any college basketball? Sure, most if not all of them will involve the Zags, but can we control the salivation just a little? Is there any other way for a mid-level mid-major team to get on ABC? Do teams like Duke get this many games against weak opposition in front of such a large national audience?

Without Gonzaga, the MVC, MWC, WAC, CAA, A-10, Horizon, and MAC all have beaten the WCC both this year and last year. With or without the Zags, the MVC has consistently beaten the WCC every year since 2004, and both this year and last year has beaten at least one Big Six conference in the Conference RPI.

But the conference that gives the high majors fits every year signed an extension with ESPN in October for “an expanded number of national appearances” – 28 in all, but 10 of those are on ESPNU, you know, the network no one gets? Only 8 appearances on ESPN(2) are guaranteed each year, and exactly 5 intraconference games this year, all on ESPN2. (According to one report, every game regular ESPN is showing this year involving two mid-major teams involves Memphis or the Zags.) The MVC continues to have the semifinals of its conference tournament on local/regional television – the SEC is the only Big Six conference without a national audience for its semifinals, unless you count the Pac-10’s national agreement with FSN. Even the MWC and (in a holdover from its major days) C-USA have their semifinals on CSTV. The Horizon League has theirs on ESPNU, as does the frickin’ OVC. And need I remind you of the WCC getting their semifinals on ESPN2?

Since that “beneficial” agreement, the Valley has seen Southern Illinois become the #6 team in the RPI. Since 1999, the last year for which kenpom.com has information, the highest the Zags have been able to muster is a #9. In fact, the last time a team outside the Big Six or C-USA was in the RPI Top 6 was #3 St. Joe’s in 2004, also the only time it’s happened since ’99… perhaps because they nearly went undefeated that year. Oh, and even C-USA has only done it three times since 1999. Oops.

I don’t seem to be alone… A search on Google for “the missouri valley is a (major OR high-major) conference” returns 1.1 million hits. By contrast, “gonzaga is a (major OR high-major) team” gets only 631,000 hits. In other Google news, “gonzaga sucks” gets 77,800 hits, comparable to 59,600 for “gonzaga is overrated”. They have a long way to go to catch the 1.06 million for “duke sucks” or the 511,000 for “duke is overrated”. As for the Valley, “the “missouri valley” sucks” gets 18,900 hits, to 23,300 for “the “missouri valley” is overrated” – both of which outpace Gonzaga if you take the quotes around “missouri valley” out, though. Hmm…

If you don’t follow college basketball at all – if you seriously pick 16 seeds to win first-round games over 1’s and pick teams based on whether you like their names or mascots – this post is NOT for you. It gets into a lot of esoterica that you probably wouldn’t care for. But if you’re one of those people who have been clamoring for me to put up some of my numerous projects, today is your lucky day!

Turn on any random regular season college basketball game, and chances are it’s a game involving teams from one of the six high-major conferences. If you get some other conference you probably live in or near it. It’s teams from the six biggest conferences that get the most NCAA Tournament bids, and it’s teams from those six conferences – the same ones that make up the BCS conferences in college football – that get the most attention. They’re the teams from the ACC, SEC, Big 10, Pac-10, Big 12, and Big East.

But… there are a lot of conferences outside the Big Six. Conferences with names like the MEAC, the SWAC, the WAC, the Southland, the Big South, the Big Sky, Horizon, America East, Atlantic 10… that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

Every year, teams from these conferences shock the world by beating Big Six conference teams in the NCAA tournament. They valiantly fight their way to bids in the NCAA Tournament, even if they don’t win their conference, and people get mad at them because they think all the bids should go to Big Six teams. Teams like Gonzaga have consistently proved the mettle of teams in the mid-majors by beating the odds and having high levels of success.

In fact, if you took all the best teams from the mid-major conferences and put them in one super-conference… that conference would probably have to be considered on a level with the Big Six conferences, maybe better.

So, at the end of the season, after the Final Four, I will name the eight teams to make up the 2007 Mid-Major Conference. It won’t have any bearing on anything right now – there’s no reward, monetary or otherwise, and it isn’t anything more than something on paper – and probably won’t even be heard of beyond the small group of people who read Da Blog. The goal is to recognize eight teams whose quality of play competes with those in the best conferences in the country.

There are some simple, but restrictive rules governing the selection of the MMC teams, with restrictions higher on the list taking precedence:

• The Mid-Major Conference shall consist of eight teams representing the best of college basketball, outside the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Pac-10, and SEC conferences.
• No conference shall have more than one team in the MMC.
• Any conference that produces at least one at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament will be represented.
• Any team that makes it to the Regional Semifinal (“Sweet 16”) or later in the NCAA tournament will automatically be represented. In the case of a conflict between two or more deserving teams under this criterion, the team to have advanced the furthest shall be counted. If two teams from the same conference advance the same distance in the NCAA tournament, the tie is broken by head-to-head record and respective distance traveled in the conference tournament.
• If conferences with automatic spots under the third criterion have no qualifying teams under the fourth, the tie is broken in this order: whether or not any teams won their first-round tournament game, head-to-head record, respective distance traveled in the conference tournament.
• If spots remain in the Mid-Major Conference after these criteria have been exhausted, or if there remains a tie in a conference under the third criterion after the criteria in the fourth or fifth criterion have been exhausted, the remaining selections will be made by my discretion. Being in the NCAA Tournament is not a qualification for being selected to the MMC, and in fact it is possible (but rare) for a team that won its first-round game to not get in the MMC while a team that settled for a long NIT run does. This is the “Northwestern State Rule”: getting lucky in one game doesn’t get you an automatic spot in the MMC.