Catching up with sports graphics in the NFL and more

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Well, if I put this off any longer than I already have, I’ll have to include baseball graphics and that means dealing with MLB Advanced Media not knowing how the Internet works, so:

Back in 2003, Fox introduced something new to their NFL score banner: rather than represent teams with abbreviations, Fox represented them solely with the teams’ logos. I fell in love with it immediately: abbreviations are arbitrary, cooked up solely for the benefit of graphics packages, while the logos introduced a sublime simplicity to Fox’s graphic. I’ve continued to go logo-only in my own fantasies ever since.

Sadly, Fox got cold feet – I guess they got complaints that people who weren’t familiar with NFL logos were getting confused – and dropped the logos during the playoffs, replacing them with these ugly abbreviations that were obviously slapped on in place of something else. In 2004, Fox used abbreviations alongside the logos on what was fundamentally the same graphic, and after that Fox stopped using logos as a permanent element of the graphic entirely. Fox would continue to evoke the logo graphic for years by having team logos appear in place of the abbreviation when the banner first comes onto the screen.

For a while, it seemed as though that would be it for using logos and relegating abbreviations to the dustbin of history (or updates on games you’re not watching). But then a funny thing happened: the NFL Network started using logos alone, and did so in two different incarnations for years. And now, in 2010, apparently the NFL Network’s success has convinced Fox to return to using the logo-only approach. In fact, they arguably take it too far; only the logos are shown even when going to break, providing no opportunity for newcomers to associate a logo with a team.

Fox also shows the potential of designing graphics with the timeout indicators in mind from the start, even to the point of turning the timeout indicators into Christmas lights during the holidays. If I had a problem, it’s with how awkward the graphic is arranged, with the logos on top of the scores and the scores arranged lengthwise.

Ironically, NFL Network decided to incorporate abbreviations into their graphic at the same time. This graphic isn’t much different from graphics I’ve made on my own time, so I can’t complain too much about it, even the excessive space between teams’ scores I’ve called the Portland Trail Blazers out for in the past. One spiffy new feature is that the indicator of which team has the ball also shows the direction the team is moving down the field (though that just makes the on-field down-and-distance indicator that much more redundant). On the downside, the timeout indicators are still on a tab slapped on to the graphic, though it’s a much less jarring tab than on NFL Network’s previous graphic, and down-and-distance and statistics feel almost as slapped on.

Still, with Fox’s new graphic and ESPN’s changes to its existing graphic, all of the NFL’s TV partners now use logos in their graphics, though CBS’s logos still look awkward. ESPN removed the “MNF” from their graphic and instead replaced the “40th Season” in the down-and-distance area with the same “MNF” wordmark. They used the space they saved from removing the “MNF” to add logos to the team names. Later in the season, they increased the font size of the time left, the down and distance, and the stat line, which I found jarring, and its inconsistent application gave away that the graphic wasn’t designed for it.

This move pretty much doomed the fate of the way ESPN’s new scoreline had previously popped itself in, with the “ESPN” sliding into its box and opening up to reveal the rest of the scoreline, which had been complemented with “MNF” doing the same thing. Now the whole scoreline “zooms in” to view. It’s not too bad for MNF, where the scoreline now pops in as a black field saying just “ESPN MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL” and then turns into the rest of the scoreline. But in other sports it just looks amateur. While I prefer turning the colored box into a triangle for college football to what they did during last year’s bowl season, the way the box pops onto the screen leaves a little to be desired.

Other than my continuing issues with the timeout indicators, I don’t really have an issue with ESPN’s new college basketball graphic.

On the other hand, ESPN has become the only NBA TV partner to have timeout indicators on their NBA graphics as well. One wonders if this is their way to continue their streak of having a different graphic for every NBA Finals.

For a while I wondered if Fox was going to go the way of Turner, and have a different graphic for every sport – their old graphic for NASCAR, their new graphic for the NFL, and an FSN-inspired graphic for baseball. I was proven wrong when both Fox and SPEED went with graphics inspired by Fox’s NFL graphics for NASCAR. My biggest problem is that the little pods for the cars in the running order look bulky, and call to mind the problems I’ve long had with ESPN’s current NASCAR graphics, even though Fox doesn’t try to cram intervals or other stats onto the same line.

Turner, meanwhile, introduced a new graphic for its NBA broadcasts, fixing the problems with their last abomination. In fact this version arguably outdoes ESPN on their idea to try to cram all graphics into the same two lines at the bottom of the screen, bringing out the advantages of that approach like nothing I’ve seen before. If I have a quibble, it’s the distracting way team logos appear whenever someone scores, which mirrors a general graphic theme that appears for highlight packages and the like. It’s a neat idea to try to de-genericize the score graphic, but still.

In fact, Turner may be moving towards graphic standardization, if the CBS/Turner graphics for March Madness are anything to go by. These graphics are a rather jarring change from the graphics CBS uses during the regular season (although some of the fonts are reminicent of the graphics package used by CBS before the current one), and contributes to the sense that Turner has taken over the tournament and nicely let CBS play with them. (However, overall the tournament keeps enough of a CBS sense that I really don’t get the synergy with “Inside the NBA” from Kenny and Charles’ presence in the studio that was intended, or from the presence of other TNT NBA personnel calling games, except maybe Reggie Miller alongside Gus Johnson at the regional semifinals.) The graphic is rather odd, but servicable, and my lack of problem with the timeout indicators may be a sign I’m growing resigned to the fact of iffy incorporation of them.

It’ll be interesting to see if similar changes are coming to Turner’s coverage of NASCAR and baseball.

Comcast, meanwhile, whipped out Versus’ new college football graphics, which are about as expected. If you’re going to put timeout indicators on a tab, you could do worse than what Versus did.

Comcast also introduced new graphics for Comcast SportsNet, rolling out a new standard for those networks that uses a shape once favored by ESPN. Thank God, too, because it means the graphics that made TNT’s look good on basketball are gone.

However, the hockey graphic looks a little amateur, especially with the way the team logos can sometimes disappear and reappear.

I’ve already seen the implementation of this graphic for baseball, but I won’t show it to you until I’m ready to deal with that can of worms. How the Comcast-NBC merger affects these graphics remains to be seen, but it has already affected one graphics package. NBC’s golf coverage has adopted the Golf Channel graphics and been rebranded “Golf Channel on NBC”.

They’re at least marginally better than what Golf Channel had before, enough that I can actually buy them being on a broadcast network, though it’s still a jarring change from NBC’s other graphics. It’ll be interesting to see how these look come the US Open.

A word of praise for the Sacramento Kings for trying something different – something I honestly had expected to see first in the NFL. Their new graphic uses team names – and not just team names, but team names taken from the teams’ jerseys. It’s barely noticable, so here’s hoping other networks (probably Fox or Turner) pick up on the trend.

By the way, NBA TV’s graphics are much less FSN-inspired than the last time I checked.

If you’re wondering, FSN is not going to a banner for all sports, instead adopting the most slapped-on timeout indicators possible for football. Check out the on-field down-and-distance that’s basically a cheap version of what Fox used for the NFL last year.

Finally, I don’t get ESPN’s rollout schedule for its new graphics. They still aren’t on tennis or NASCAR (tennis will probably get them for Wimbledon, NASCAR maybe by the time ESPN takes over the Sprint Cup schedule, but NASCAR in particular is still mystifying), but they are on MLS broadcasts and college lacrosse (which uses a variant of the college football graphic – and I should mention that college hockey doesn’t have these yet either). MLS has introduced us to a new variation of the graphic.

At the very end of the video, the graphic pops out of existence in a unique manner, a variant of how it pops in. I’m very impressed; I’d like to see that be the way it pops in and out for other sports. (I’m also seeing a trend reflected in this graphic regarding new implementations of ESPN’s new graphics package, but I’ll save that for next time.)

The 2011 Mid-Major Conference

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Refer to this post if you don’t know what this is about or to catch up on the rules.

This year, four conferences produced multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament: the MWC, A-10, CAA, and C-USA. These conferences are guaranteed one spot each in the Mid-Major Conference.

Five teams reached the Sweet 16, and for the first time since I started doing the MMC, two of them came from the same conference, the Mountain West (both lost in the Sweet 16). Of the other three, Butler did not come from a multi-bid conference, while VCU and Richmond did. Neither team from Conference USA won their first game, but Memphis did not have to play in the “First Four”, won the conference tournament, and swept UAB in the regular season. According to the link at the top of this post, BYU’s 2-1 record against San Diego State trumps SDSU’s win over the Cougars in the finals of the conference tournament.

This leaves three spots in the MMC to be determined by my discretion, with no conference restrictions.

Without further ado, the eight members of the 2010 Mid-Major Conference:

Butler (Horizon League)
VCU (Colonial Athletic Association)
Richmond (Atlantic 10)
BYU (Mountain West Conference)
Memphis (Conference USA)
Gonzaga (West Coast Conference)
Princeton (Ivy League)
Wichita State (Missouri Valley Conference)

A lack of mid-major success in the NCAAs (very few multi-bid conferences, very few single-bid conference teams winning tourney games – basically Gonzaga and Morehead State, which falls under the Northwestern State rule) means I not only picked a team in the NIT final four, I almost picked another NIT team in College of Charleston, ahead of Princeton. Then I remembered how good Princeton and Harvard were. Wichita State was maybe a fringe contender at best for an at-large, but Indiana State and Missouri State didn’t make good cases for themselves with the way they crapped out of their respective tournaments.

My experience with Bracket Ladder got me thinking about criticisms that could be made against my rules. VCU simultaneously is an argument against my Sweet 16 auto bid rule – so you’re mediocre(ly good) all season and catch fire at the right time? – and an example of why I have it: no one remembers that VCU only barely got into the tournament now that they’re in the Final Four! A more problematic case is giving Memphis an auto bid solely because UAB got a bid they might not have been deserving of, but the multi-bid-conference rule is more at the core of the MMC; it’s intended to reflect the best conferences. Had they not received an auto bid to the MMC, Memphis might have received a discretionary pick anyway.

I blame the conversation between Elan and Tarquin for the slowdown.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized firing squad.)

Everyone who reads Da Blog knows about my love affair with The Order of the Stick. I’ve called it one of the best webcomics ever made and able to stand up among the great works of literature. Yet I’ve realized recently that I could poke holes at most of the story. Of the five books that have been published in whole or part online, only the third is one I don’t have significant problems with calling the “real” OOTS. The first book is mostly D&D jokes, the second book is a bridge between the first and third, and my issues with the fourth and fifth have been well documented. (Seriously, we’ve spent close to a YEAR of real time in the Empire of Blood!) So it’s tempting to wonder if my love for OOTS is really a love for OOTS as a whole, or just a love for the fantastic third book.

But the second, fourth and fifth books have also contained hints of what makes OOTS so great (and I’ve spoken as such about the fourth before as well), and the most recent comic is probably one I would point to if asked what it is that Rich Burlew brings to The Order of the Stick that makes it so great: dramatic timing, and characterization.

Most of this comic cross-cuts between two different plot threads. The first is Tarquin’s frustration with Enor and Gannji’s refusal to fight each other, and Elan’s exasperation with his father for making two best friends fight, for Elan’s supposed amusement. The other involves Enor and Gannji’s refusal to fight each other.

To be honest, right up until the comic before this one, Enor and Gannji were little more than barely-fleshed-out unsympathetic antagonists – maybe even bumbling fools, despite their success at bringing in Elan, Haley, and V. After the mistaken-identity business was sorted out, and after Gannji extorted Tarquin out of some of the bounty, they wound up in the same bar as Roy and Belkar and started a barroom brawl by attacking Roy. That got them thrown in prison, with Tarquin refusing to clear their names, so they’ve spent the better part of fifty strips verbally sparring with Roy and Belkar in anticipation of a meeting in the gladiatorial arena.

In all that time, “Gannji” and “Enor” could very easily be replaced with “Nale” and “Thog” without much in the way of changes, except that Enor’s a bit more articulate than Thog. They’ve essentially been comic relief for other characters to play off of, empty antagonists to get on our heroes’ nerves. And with Roy being ranked and Enor , all the characters – and the fans – were anticipating a Roy-Enor showdown that would, essentially, be the culmination of this confrontation with this pair of minor villains. That is, until it turned out that would in fact be facing , which oh-so-coincidentially (not) happened to be Gannji. (That leaves Roy to face “the Champion”, who’s been undefeated for many, many months. Which does not bode well for Our Hero.)

The prospect of having to fight each other has suddenly turned Enor and Gannji a lot more sympathetic (even Roy feels sorry for their plight), and this comic makes their story a lot more tragic than it had been. After standing around fake-fighting poorly for a while, Gannji proposes an unthinkable solution: he’s willing to let Enor kill him, reasoning that Enor can survive longer without him than Gannji can without Enor, planning for Enor to cut his tail off and get him resurrected once he escapes. Enor refuses, even proposing to sacrifice himself, since Gannji could deal with life without him better than Enor could without Gannji. Finally, in the antepenultimate panel, Gannji kneels down and closes his eyes, awaiting his fate from Enor, who’s been convinced that “this is the way it has to be”.

This is one more in a long tradition of Rich’s well-fleshed-out, sympathetic antagonists. Rich has shown repeatedly his refusal to accept a strict division between Good and Evil of the sort that D&D seems to require. For example, no OOTS character has provoked more discussion than Miko, she of the self-righteous, jumping to conclusions, ever-suspicious sort. Her inability to withstand or accept the collapse of her worldview is arguably as important and powerful a plot as the main plot, and the closure of that plot provided by her death is one of the more celebrated OOTS moments, which is saying a lot. Tarquin himself could be seen as an example of a fleshed-out antagonist. The two main antagonists, the Linear Guild and “Team Evil”, haven’t been fleshed out nearly as much, unless you’ve read the Start of Darkness prequel and experienced Redcloak’s own tragedy, which reaches its nadir at the end of that book but isn’t over yet.

Rich expertly arranges this comic’s main plot threads to rise and fall with each other. As Gannji proposes that Enor kills him, Tarquin asks his assistant to get ready to kill them. As Enor refuses and the two negotiate who’s going to kill who, Elan pleads with Tarquin not to make them fight each other. Finally, as Enor finally gets ready to kill Gannji, Tarquin orders them both killed, and the final panel shows a bunch of soldiers firing their bows – which just adds another layer of tragedy to the strip, as even Gannji’s plan comes too late for either of them. (The cliffhanger ending leaves open the possibility of either or both surviving – but the forum consensus is that Gannji is much more dead meat than Enor.)

That isn’t to say this strip is perfect – we haven’t cared about Enor or Gannji for long enough for this strip to have its maximum impact, it doesn’t tell us anything about Tarquin we didn’t already know, and this plotline in general has dragged on so long it’s starting to push out more plot-relevant parts of the book (besides Girard’s Gate, didn’t we have a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it segment involving V’s divorce?), and I now suspect Rich is starting to try to accelerate (or “rush”) through the end of it. But it hasn’t been without its virtues, and one of them will be the subject of a future post.

Get out of my head, Randall.

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(From xkcd. Click for full-sized ghost in the machine.)

I’m sick, it’s very late and I’m probably not very coherent right now, but it’s not as late as it was Tuesday night.

First a clarification: I stand by most of what I said in my original xkcd review yea so many years ago. I don’t think xkcd is compelling enough for me to come back to it three times a week. It’s more disorganized even than most gag-a-day comics; each strip exists in its own right, but even if Randall Munroe were to write the greatest comic in the history of history, it still wouldn’t keep me interested enough to check out any other strips. No matter how much consistent quality xkcd puts out, it’s still more of an editorial cartoon for geeks than anything else.

Recently, if I have nothing else to do and/or don’t feel like doing anything too “thinky”, I’ll mosey on over to xkcd. It’s good for a quick laugh to pick up the day, and I’ll also trawl the recent archives for other recent, quick-hit strips. xkcd consists of a bunch of isolated incidents that can occasionally rise to the level of being quite funny, and often thought-provoking. But I’m just not sure it’s enough to keep me coming back for a single isolated incident three times a week, and unlike, say, The Order of the Stick, I can certainly go long stretches without knowing what the latest xkcd happenings are. Since I’m not as well connected in the social web as most people on the Internet, I suspect much of what’s keeping xkcd going is its reputation as a meme factory.

But I just had to mention that on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, I was in the middle of a semi-unplanned 12-hour all-nighter to compose a paper for a philosophy class. Working on something I don’t necessarily enjoy for 12 hours straight isn’t really my forte, and I occasionally drifted over to other mindless activities.

One of which was checking xkcd and seeing a joke about the Allegory of the Cave.

I am convinced Randall Munroe is somehow connected to the essential life force of the universe.

Bracket Ladder Post-Mortem

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Well, that was fun, but I’m never doing it again.

Over the last two months or so of the college basketball season, I engaged in a project I called Bracket Ladder – attempting to show how meaningful the college basketball regular season really is through my own attempt at “bracketology”. I knew it was probably a bad idea to try to balance such a project with my schoolwork, but I didn’t realize just how much of my time it would monopolize. It regularly took me all day to create a new ladder, by which point it would already be out of date. (Is there a reason CBSSports.com’s RPI page, the only freely available page of its kind I know of, doesn’t update until late in the morning the following day, as opposed to, say, 1 AM PT at the latest?) By the end it was taking me two days – and I’d barely even crossed over past the tip of the bubble – largely because the tedium of doing the same repetitive comparing work for two days was starting to wear on me. The result: Despite intending to go daily during Championship Week, I pretty much decided to up and quit after putting out a Ladder Tuesday night.

All that, and I didn’t even show what I had intended to show. My original plans for Bracket Ladder involved not just the NCAA Tournament, but coverage of every team contending for the NIT, CBI, and CIT, to show that all of them are good teams in their own way, comprising still less than half of Division I, a smaller percentage than go to the NBA or NHL playoffs despite playing fewer games per team. By showing how “good” can be a relative term, I would show how even bubble teams are really among the elite squads in the country, not to show that expanding the NCAA Tournament further wouldn’t be a disaster, but to show the opposite: that the regular season is plenty meaningful and to counteract the “regular season is meaningless already” mentality behind the recent push for a 96-team NCAA Tournament. (I’m worried that the ultimate motivation for turning the first and second rounds into the “second” and “third” rounds may be to set the stage for an eventual 96-team expansion.)

There’s a part of me that regrets not getting further than the tip of the bubble (not only for not showing what I wanted to show, but for not finding out if there’s a pecking order between the CBI and CIT), and a part of me that wants to do it again next year just to make good on that, but then I realize I can’t even imagine the amount of work that would have been required by tripling the number of teams I would have had to compare (assuming all the auto bids are within or close to the top 140 teams). But even to the limited extent I was able to do what I intended, it doesn’t look good for that premise, as I found plenty negative to say just about the teams in the NCAAs. (Then again, the fact that I was able to find bad things to say about 1-seeds, and good things to say about teams on the wrong side of the bubble, probably suggests that as a whole, a longer ladder would have largely succeeded in showing “good” to be a relative term.)

Whether or not I would have shown what I wanted to show, though, I still think the concept of the Bracket Ladder is still incredibly useful. College basketball’s biggest problem is the lack of a true national “standings”. The polls extend to the top 25 only, have no bearing on NCAA Tournament seeding and don’t always reflect potential tournament seeding. Most “bracketologists” release their findings as a bracket, which is meaningless until the real bracket comes out on Selection Sunday, and the seeds can’t be used to tease out a rough order of teams because they reflect bracketing principles, including moving teams up or down a seed line as necessary. The only alternatives tend to focus on the bubble, or whether or not a team is getting in or out of the NCAAs at all, not seeding within it, and tends to be treated as radically separate from the bracket despite being two sides of the same coin – and they don’t always do a good job with relative standing, often showing three gradations of teams at most. Extending past the bubble into the NIT field, let alone the CBI or CIT fields, is extremely uncommon and subject to more severe versions of the same problems.

Having some sort of reference of this kind would help me figure out what’s at stake for every team in every game (assuming they’re in contention for a postseason tournament). Personally, I think the NCAA Tournament selection committee should embrace more transparency, which they’re slowly being dragged kicking and screaming to. Slowly, they’ve adopted releasing the order of the seeds, then the RPI throughout the season, and now with the “First Four” the last four teams to make the field. But the controversy surrounding the inclusion of VCU and UAB and the exclusion of Colorado, and the tournament committee chair’s inability to explain those moves, suggests they have a long way to go. The argument that the committee doesn’t want to offend fans of included or excluded schools is starting to no longer hold water. If the committee released their full ranking of not just the at-large teams in the field, but some number of teams that were under consideration at the end but wound up on the wrong side of the cutline, it might go far to help teams figure out what they need to do to improve their chances of getting in, and it might help improve the Selection Committee’s work as well.

(It probably says a lot that my own ladder wouldn’t necessarily have disagreed with the selection committee; the last ladder had UAB – and several other C-USA teams – in the field (and two teams on the bubble, Marshall and UCF, that didn’t even make the NIT) and Colorado out. Once the good wins and bad losses of teams I was comparing no longer involved teams I had placed on the ladder, I was left to work with RPI, and my habit was to favor whoever had both the best wins and least bad losses, and if that wasn’t the same team – generally regardless of how good or bad those wins and losses were – I looked at the “index numbers” – strength of schedule, road/neutral record, out-of-conference record, and record against RPI Top 50 teams – completely equally, and even threw out numbers where one team’s wins and losses were both greater than the other. Incidentially, a funny thing I found out during this process: If the Selection Committee were really conference-blind as they claim, it would actually help teams in conferences with a lot of bids, since they play each other so much. By the end, I had 10 of the Big East’s 11 bids on the top five seed lines.)

Because of this deficiency in college basketball, I still believe in the concept of the Bracket Ladder, though I now suspect it would take a team of people to carry it out to the extent I intended (presumably, a team more versed in college basketball than I am). I still consider the colored bar on the right side of the team name to be the most important part of the ladder. Until Championship Week, it’s largely meaningless and several colors are missing because of the uncertainty and density of games during that span, breaking a lot of the symbolism – “Green”, the color for teams whose seed ceiling is 5 or less, didn’t appear until Old Dominion locked up the CAA’s auto bid – and I would consider simply having a single “green” color for NCAA tournament locks until then, but I still think that the “blue” and higher colors are important to show there are still things worth playing for even within the field, and that the seed ranges and colors would still be an important resource during Championship Week, so you know what even the teams already in the tournament are still playing for besides pride. Certainly it would be useful for me.

(I would use progressively darker shades of red to progress from “NIT Lock” – the same shade of red as “Probably out” of the NCAAs – to black for “NIT Probably Out”, the same color as “CBI/CIT Lock” or “CBI/CIT Probably In”, with a gray color for the CBI/CIT bubble and white for “CBI/CIT Probably Out”. All NCAA, NIT, and in the case of the Great West Conference, CIT auto bids would be integrated into the ladder with a different shade of gray for their color in the place they would be ranked in comparison to the other teams on the ladder.)

One last thing: I intended to eventually introduce another concept as part of the Bracket Ladder, “Recent Win Percentage”, an attempt to accomodate and exploit the committee’s decision to no longer consider any particular number of games down the stretch when evaluating teams. The idea was to average your winning percentage in your last game, your winning percentage in your last two games, your last three games, your last four games, and so on. Though it could be useful on its own, it’s mostly useful by contrast with the regular win percentage, but by the time I got around to calculating it, the Ladder was taking long enough already.

Bracket Ladder for March 8, 2011

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Much of the uncertainty surrounding the seed ranges of teams on the ladder in the past reflected the uncertainty of conference tournaments – namely, who you would face in the conference tournament. All the conference tournament brackets are now set, so we can begin to determine solid seed floors – and seed ceilings, for that matter. All the seed ranges have now been recalibrated to reflect the conference tournament brackets, and we have some new developments as a result, most notably our first “medals”.

(Why do each of the top four seed lines have its own color corresponding to that seed being the floor? Once you get outside the at-larges, the differences between teams go up dramatically, so on the other end of the bracket – the top four seed lines – there’s a lot more competition to get the worst opponent possible. The committee doesn’t make seed adjustments for the top four seed lines and there’s little reason to do so for the bottom four, but that doesn’t mean a one-to-one comparison between the best teams playing the worst teams, so seed line matters a lot more.)

I’ve finally begin to create a bracket and talk about tourney sites. Some caveats: We (or at least I) know next to nothing how the teams will be paired up for the “First Four” games, other than the last four at-larges will be paired with each other and the last four auto bids will be paired with each other, and we also know next to nothing how the NCAA will try to keep the HBCU association happy. With the old play-in game, the NCAA always made sure at least one team did not come from one of the HBCU conferences (the MEAC and SWAC), to leave open the possibility of both HBCU conference champions making the main field. What will they do now with an additional play-in game? Continue to keep an HBCU team out of the First Four? Put the two HBCU teams in different play-in games to keep the possibility of both teams making the main field? Put the HBCU teams in the same play-in game to guarantee one makes the main field? My guess is the first of the three, but we’re starting to push the limits of that strategy working (we’re talking a 15 seed in a 64-team field), so I’m not holding myself to any particular strategy.

Note that the teams out of the tournament are restricted to just the “first four out” for today only. I hope I can do enough on Wednesday to extend the cutline all the way to the first four NIT seeds.

This edition of the Bracket Ladder is complete through the games of March 7, 2011. This means it does not include any of Tuesday’s games, including the Connecticut-DePaul game.

How to read the chart: Teams are listed in order of my assessment of their strength based on the criteria established by the selection committee. The large gray number to the left is the team’s seed in the NCAA Tournament if the teams were seeded strictly according to the list order. Teams may receive a higher or lower seed because of bracketing principles. If a seed has an “f” superscript, that team would play in one of the “First Four” games in Dayton on the Tuesday or Wednesday after Selection Sunday before playing games against teams in the main bracket. The code at the right side of each team name represents the team’s conference and a running count of the number of teams that conference has in all tournaments. The row beneath the team name packs in a whole bunch of information. In order: The team’s record is on the far left in bold. RPI: Rating Percentage Index rank. SOS: Strength of Schedule rank. R/N: Record in road and neutral-site games. OOC: Record in games outside the conference. RPI TXX: Record against teams in the RPI Top 50 or 100. Wv≥: Number of wins against teams listed seven spots behind them or higher on the ladder. Lv≤: Number of losses against teams listed seven spots ahead of them or worse on the laddera. The colored bar at the far right side of the team name is the most important element, containing most of the information you need to know. It is color-coded to reflect where each team is in the pecking order and what they have to play for, as follows:

Ovr. -4 Gold: Cannot fall below the seed. Listed with the overall seeds (#1-4) the team could get.

Silver: Cannot fall below the seed.

Bronze: Cannot fall below the seed.

Purple: Cannot fall below the seed.

Blue: Could earn a top-4 seed, or might not. Top-4 seeds receive protection in the bracket process to make sure they aren’t sent too far away from home, since they’ll be the top seed in their pod.

Green: A lock to make the tournament, but cannot receive a top-4 seed. Numbers inside the boxes for silver through green indicate the seed range a team could receive. The first number is the seed ceiling, the best seed that could result from a reasonable best-case scenario for the rest of the season and the committee’s assessment of the team, the middle number is the current seed based on the current position in the bracket ladder, and the last number is the seed floor, the worst seed that could result from a reasonable worst-case scenario for the rest of the season and the committee’s assessment of the team. The seed ceiling could increase or seed floor decrease in extraordinary circumstances.

Yellow: “Probably in”. This color marks the start of the bubble.

Orange: On the tip of the bubble, could go either way. Listed as “Barely in” or “Barely out” based on what side of the cutline they fall in the order.

Red: “Probably out”, teams with a longshot chance to make the NCAA Tournament but are more likely going to the NIT (or worse). Teams in this range that are the highest-rated from their conference are listed as “Needs Auto”, to indicate they need the auto bid to get in but are currently listed in the field.
1 – 2 – 2
2 – 3 – 3
3 – 4 – 4
4 – 4 – 5
5 – 6 – 7
Probably In
Barely In
Probably Out

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Bracket Ladder for March 5, 2011

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Conference tournaments are starting to get into gear, so better late than never to add the remaining 19 or so auto bids to the ladder. (I don’t actually have write-ups for them because this is late enough as it is.) I used to marvel at the committee’s ability to sort out fairly weak teams no one had heard about, but going in to trying it myself I was actually expecting it to go a bit easier than sorting out the auto bids, since under normal circumstances these teams would be quite spread out on the ladder. Teams listed for auto bids for conferences whose auto bids haven’t been determined are those teams that would have the highest position on the bracket ladder if I extended the ladder that far, not counting conference tournament games. The use of red for the top few teams in this new group is not intended to reflect on where those teams stand in relation to the bubble; it is a very vague guesstimation of how far the bubble extends.

With this addition, we can finally begin to create a bracket (look for a link on Twitter shortly after this goes up) and talk about tourney sites, so a lot of the descriptions for teams on the main ladder have undergone substantial revision even if their relative situation hasn’t much. Some caveats: We (or at least I) know next to nothing how the teams will be paired up for the “First Four” games, other than the last four at-larges will be paired with each other and the last four auto bids will be paired with each other, and we also know next to nothing how the NCAA will try to keep the HBCU association happy. With the old play-in game, the NCAA always made sure at least one team did not come from one of the HBCU conferences (the MEAC and SWAC), to leave open the possibility of both HBCU conference champions making the main field. What will they do now with an additional play-in game? Continue to keep an HBCU team out of the First Four? Put the two HBCU teams in different play-in games to keep the possibility of both teams making the main field? Put the HBCU teams in the same play-in game to guarantee one makes the main field? My guess is the first of the three, but we’re starting to push the limits of that strategy working (we’re talking a 15 seed in a 64-team field), so I’m not holding myself to any particular strategy.

I’ve also made an attempt to break the improbable gridlock at the tip of the bubble, but it’s still not what you expect. I still believe in Marshall and Miami more than most people, I’m still not quite a believer in Washington or Michigan, and I still can’t slide Minnesota or Memphis all the way out of the tournament. But Ole Miss does fall well out of the tournament after losing to lowly Auburn, and apologies to Michael Wilbon, but for all their consistency Northwestern doesn’t have the depth of wins I’d like for the lofty position I had them at before and has way too weak a road record and record against good teams – Minnesota is barely anything at this point. Updates for Saturday’s games coming Monday.

This edition of the Bracket Ladder is complete through the games of March 4, 2011. This means it does not include any of Saturday’s games, including the Duke-North Carolina game.

How to read the chart: Teams are listed in order of my assessment of their strength based on the criteria established by the selection committee. The large gray number to the left is the team’s seed in the NCAA Tournament if the teams were seeded strictly according to the list order. Teams may receive a higher or lower seed because of bracketing principles. If a seed has an “f” superscript, that team would play in one of the “First Four” games in Dayton on the Tuesday or Wednesday after Selection Sunday before playing games against teams in the main bracket. The code at the right side of each team name represents the team’s conference and a running count of the number of teams that conference has in all tournaments. The row beneath the team name packs in a whole bunch of information. In order: The team’s record is on the far left in bold. RPI: Rating Percentage Index rank. SOS: Strength of Schedule rank. R/N: Record in road and neutral-site games. OOC: Record in games outside the conference. RPI TXX: Record against teams in the RPI Top 50 or 100. Wv≥: Number of wins against teams listed seven spots behind them or higher on the ladder. Lv≤: Number of losses against teams listed seven spots ahead of them or worse on the laddera. The colored bar at the far right side of the team name is the most important element, containing most of the information you need to know. It is color-coded to reflect where each team is in the pecking order and what they have to play for, as follows:

Ovr. -4 Gold: Cannot fall below the seed. Listed with the overall seeds (#1-4) the team could get.

Silver: Cannot fall below the seed.

Bronze: Cannot fall below the seed.

Purple: Cannot fall below the seed.

Blue: Could earn a top-4 seed, or might not. Top-4 seeds receive protection in the bracket process to make sure they aren’t sent too far away from home, since they’ll be the top seed in their pod.

Green: A lock to make the tournament, but cannot receive a top-4 seed. Numbers inside the boxes for silver through green indicate the seed range a team could receive. The first number is the seed ceiling, the best seed that could result from a reasonable best-case scenario for the rest of the season and the committee’s assessment of the team, the middle number is the current seed based on the current position in the bracket ladder, and the last number is the seed floor, the worst seed that could result from a reasonable worst-case scenario for the rest of the season and the committee’s assessment of the team. The seed ceiling could increase or seed floor decrease in extraordinary circumstances.

Yellow: “Probably in”. This color marks the start of the bubble.

Orange: On the tip of the bubble, could go either way. Listed as “Barely in” or “Barely out” based on what side of the cutline they fall in the order.

Red: “Probably out”, teams with a longshot chance to make the NCAA Tournament but are more likely going to the NIT (or worse). Teams in this range that are the highest-rated from their conference are listed as “Needs Auto”, to indicate they need the auto bid to get in but are currently listed in the field.
1 – 2 – 2
2 – 3 – 3
3 – 4 – 4
4 – 4 – 5
5 – 6 – 7
Probably In
Barely In
Probably Out

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Bracket Ladder for March 2, 2011

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Take a look at the list of colors below. You’ll see a veritable kaleidoscope of colors mentioned: gold, silver, bronze, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Many of these colors were intended to keep to a theme; the Olympic medals were obvious, but the bubble colors were also intended to resemble a “traffic light” through green (go to the tournament), yellow (caution), the in-between orange, and red (stop, you’re not getting in).

Instead, it’s been more like blue, yellow, orange. I just tend to leave my options so wide-open that seed ranges are really broad fairly late into the season. I fully expected that teams wouldn’t lock up medal positions until close to championship week, but we only got our first tourney lock with a seed ceiling that wasn’t 1 a week or so ago! I intended the blue area to represent a “4-seed bubble”, or at least representing something worth fighting for other than just getting in to the tournament, and envisioned most of the tourney locks falling in the green range, but it seems blue is becoming the true color representing “lock”. (Maybe I should have made green “probably in”, yellow “barely in”, and orange “barely out”.) It doesn’t help that on Saturday, teams with seeds as high as 6 were being listed as “probably in”, and bubble colors trump colors that require a seed range because making the tournament is still more important than seed inside the tournament (and what’s the seed floor for a team that could miss the dance entirely?). With a better handle on what the committee is looking for, I could probably tighten the seed ranges and maybe get some teams in the green, and much of the uncertainty in seed ranges has to do with the inherent uncertainty of conference tournaments. Expect seed ranges to close fast over the next few ladders; you’ll see this already in the capsules for Old Dominion, George Mason, and Gonzaga, whose regular seasons are already basically over. I fully intend to put up ladders daily during Championship Week starting Monday, when I’ll do my conference championship seed range recalibration (CCSRR for short).

In the name of keeping the time spent on composition brief (I started working on this after 2 PM PT!), this is not going to be as robust a comparison as what you’ll see on Friday. I intend to take advantage of having relatively less work to do on Friday, so don’t be surprised by seemingly unjustified, “upon further review” moves on Friday.

This edition of the Bracket Ladder is complete through the games of March 1, 2011. This means it does not include any of Wednesday’s games, including the Connecticut-West Virginia game.

How to read the chart: Teams are listed in order of my assessment of their strength based on the criteria established by the selection committee. The large gray number to the left is the team’s seed in the NCAA Tournament if the teams were seeded strictly according to the list order. Teams may receive a higher or lower seed because of bracketing principles. If a seed has an “f” superscript, that team would play in one of the “First Four” games in Dayton on the Tuesday or Wednesday after Selection Sunday before playing games against teams in the main bracket. The code at the right side of each team name represents the team’s conference and a running count of the number of teams that conference has in all tournaments. The row beneath the team name packs in a whole bunch of information. In order: The team’s record is on the far left in bold. RPI: Rating Percentage Index rank. SOS: Strength of Schedule rank. R/N: Record in road and neutral-site games. OOC: Record in games outside the conference. RPI TXX: Record against teams in the RPI Top 50 or 100. Wv≥: Number of wins against teams listed seven spots behind them or higher on the ladder. Lv≤: Number of losses against teams listed seven spots ahead of them or worse on the laddera. The colored bar at the far right side of the team name is the most important element, containing most of the information you need to know. It is color-coded to reflect where each team is in the pecking order and what they have to play for, as follows:

Ovr. -4 Gold: Cannot fall below the seed. Listed with the overall seeds (#1-4) the team could get.

Silver: Cannot fall below the seed.

Bronze: Cannot fall below the seed.

Purple: Cannot fall below the seed.

Blue: Could earn a top-4 seed, or might not. Top-4 seeds receive protection in the bracket process to make sure they aren’t sent too far away from home, since they’ll be the top seed in their pod.

Green: A lock to make the tournament, but cannot receive a top-4 seed. Numbers inside the boxes for silver through green indicate the seed range a team could receive. The first number is the seed ceiling, the best seed that could result from a reasonable best-case scenario for the rest of the season and the committee’s assessment of the team, the middle number is the current seed based on the current position in the bracket ladder, and the last number is the seed floor, the worst seed that could result from a reasonable worst-case scenario for the rest of the season and the committee’s assessment of the team. The seed ceiling could increase or seed floor decrease in extraordinary circumstances.

Yellow: “Probably in”. This color marks the start of the bubble.

Orange: On the tip of the bubble, could go either way. Listed as “Barely in” or “Barely out” based on what side of the cutline they fall in the order.

Red: “Probably out”, teams with a longshot chance to make the NCAA Tournament but are more likely going to the NIT (or worse). Teams in this range that are the highest-rated from their conference are listed as “Needs Auto”, to indicate they need the auto bid to get in but are currently listed in the field.
1 – 2 – 2
2 – 3 – 3
3 – 4 – 4
4 – 4 – 5
5 – 6 – 7
Probably In
Barely In
Probably Out

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Bracket Ladder for February 26, 2011

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So yeah, this is really late because I’m actually starting to get tired of the whole enterprise. But I will press on for you all! Next two ladders will be out Tuesday and Friday.

Three developments on this ladder compared with Monday. First, St. John’s rockets up the board again and turns the Big East’s Big Eight into a Big Nine. There just isn’t enough of a case to be made against them, and frankly, the Big East has an unfair advantage in the seeding since they have so many teams on the top few seed lines. Second, Connecticut’s loss to Marquette finally gives me an excuse to dislodge them from the top seed line. Third, we’re finally starting to see those ugly profiles I mentioned the last two ladders. On Monday, you’ll see the rest of the auto bids, an actual bracket, and the start of talk about tourney sites.

This edition of the Bracket Ladder is complete through the games of February 25, 2011. This means it does not include any of Saturday’s games, including the BYU-San Diego State game.

How to read the chart: Teams are listed in order of my assessment of their strength based on the criteria established by the selection committee. The large gray number to the left is the team’s seed in the NCAA Tournament if the teams were seeded strictly according to the list order. Teams may receive a higher or lower seed because of bracketing principles. If a seed has an “f” superscript, that team would play in one of the “First Four” games in Dayton on the Tuesday or Wednesday after Selection Sunday before playing games against teams in the main bracket. The code at the right side of each team name represents the team’s conference and a running count of the number of teams that conference has in all tournaments. The row beneath the team name packs in a whole bunch of information. In order: The team’s record is on the far left in bold. RPI: Rating Percentage Index rank. SOS: Strength of Schedule rank. R/N: Record in road and neutral-site games. OOC: Record in games outside the conference. RPI TXX: Record against teams in the RPI Top 50 or 100. Wv≥: Number of wins against teams listed seven spots behind them or higher on the ladder. Lv≤: Number of losses against teams listed seven spots ahead of them or worse on the laddera. The colored bar at the far right side of the team name is the most important element, containing most of the information you need to know. It is color-coded to reflect where each team is in the pecking order and what they have to play for, as follows:

Ovr. -4 Gold: Cannot fall below the seed. Listed with the overall seeds (#1-4) the team could get.

Silver: Cannot fall below the seed.

Bronze: Cannot fall below the seed.

Purple: Cannot fall below the seed.

Blue: Could earn a top-4 seed, or might not. Top-4 seeds receive protection in the bracket process to make sure they aren’t sent too far away from home, since they’ll be the top seed in their pod.

Green: A lock to make the tournament, but cannot receive a top-4 seed. Numbers inside the boxes for silver through green indicate the seed range a team could receive. The first number is the seed ceiling, the best seed that could result from a reasonable best-case scenario for the rest of the season and the committee’s assessment of the team, the middle number is the current seed based on the current position in the bracket ladder, and the last number is the seed floor, the worst seed that could result from a reasonable worst-case scenario for the rest of the season and the committee’s assessment of the team. The seed ceiling could increase or seed floor decrease in extraordinary circumstances.

Yellow: “Probably in”. This color marks the start of the bubble.

Orange: On the tip of the bubble, could go either way. Listed as “Barely in” or “Barely out” based on what side of the cutline they fall in the order.

Red: “Probably out”, teams with a longshot chance to make the NCAA Tournament but are more likely going to the NIT (or worse). Teams in this range that are the highest-rated from their conference are listed as “Needs Auto”, to indicate they need the auto bid to get in but are currently listed in the field.
1 – 2 – 2
2 – 3 – 3
3 – 4 – 4
4 – 4 – 5
5 – 6 – 7
Probably In
Barely In
Probably Out

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Bracket Ladder for February 21, 2011

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With every BCS team on the top two seed lines losing over the past week, it seems an opportune time to reassess the top two seed lines and whether they’re an accurate reflection of the best teams in the country. I’m starting to get a sense of how people size up teams – which is not to say that’s how I’m going to start sizing them up. It’s apparent that people seem to place a lot more emphasis on who you’ve lost to than who you’ve beaten. That’s the only explanation for Pitt being penalized seemingly entirely because they lost to Tennessee, admittedly on a neutral site. Never mind that by that logic, Kansas should be penalized for losing to Kansas State, or Texas should be penalized for losing to Nebraska AND USC, or Duke should be penalized for losing to Florida State. (Yeah, as you can probably guess, this process isn’t going to magically move Texas or Duke up to the top line. I’m getting disgusted enough with ESPN, especially Lunardi and Gottleib, that I may write an entire piece outside the Bracket Ladder framework just so Bleacher Report can see my grievances. I knew my opinions would differ from the “mainstream”, but I didn’t know the “mainstream” would be this delusional.)

The Tennessee loss may not have been enough to drop Pittsburgh from the king-of-the-hill position, but the St. John’s loss does raise serious questions about their resume. Pitt still has a gaudy collection of wins against good teams, but having two losses to teams outside the top four seed lines is a serious problem. It’s at this point that I begin to notice that Ohio State’s two losses are both road losses to very good teams, and while the Buckeyes may not have as gaudy a collection of wins as the Panthers, they do have a road nonconference blowout win over a very good Florida team. In the end, the relative standing between the two depended to a large extent on how high the teams that beat them rose as a result of their defeats. I’m still partial to Pitt, but the race is definitely tightening, and the Buckeyes could have easily returned to the king-of-the-hill spot had they beaten Purdue on the road. The rest of the top two seed lines remain unchanged, though I once again have serious misgivings about Kansas. The biggest change is my decision to move Florida (and Kentucky) back a seed line. A team with four losses outside the RPI Top 90 is not a top-three seed.

Because I started doing this VERY late, the only teams outside the tournament that I’ve listed are those necessary to figure out which teams should replace the teams that were at the tip of the bubble last Thursday, a good number of whom lost. Trust me, when we get a significant distance into the bubble, some of the teams on the ladder will be ugly as sin.

This edition of the Bracket Ladder is complete through the games of February 20, 2011. This means it does not include any of Monday’s games, including the Syracuse-Villanova game.

How to read the chart: Teams are listed in order of my assessment of their strength based on the criteria established by the selection committee. The large gray number to the left is the team’s seed in the NCAA Tournament if the teams were seeded strictly according to the list order. Teams may receive a higher or lower seed because of bracketing principles. If a seed has an “f” superscript, that team would play in one of the “First Four” games in Dayton on the Tuesday or Wednesday after Selection Sunday before playing games against teams in the main bracket. The code at the right side of each team name represents the team’s conference and a running count of the number of teams that conference has in all tournaments. The row beneath the team name packs in a whole bunch of information. In order: The team’s record is on the far left in bold. RPI: Rating Percentage Index rank. SOS: Strength of Schedule rank. R/N: Record in road and neutral-site games. OOC: Record in games outside the conference. RPI TXX: Record against teams in the RPI Top 50 or 100. Wv≥: Number of wins against teams listed seven spots behind them or higher on the ladder. Lv≤: Number of losses against teams listed seven spots ahead of them or worse on the laddera. The colored bar at the far right side of the team name is the most important element, containing most of the information you need to know. It is color-coded to reflect where each team is in the pecking order and what they have to play for, as follows:

Ovr. -4 Gold: Cannot fall below the seed. Listed with the overall seeds (#1-4) the team could get.

Silver: Cannot fall below the seed.

Bronze: Cannot fall below the seed.

Purple: Cannot fall below the seed.

Blue: Could earn a top-4 seed, or might not. Top-4 seeds receive protection in the bracket process to make sure they aren’t sent too far away from home, since they’ll be the top seed in their pod.

Green: A lock to make the tournament, but cannot receive a top-4 seed. Numbers inside the boxes for silver through green indicate the seed range a team could receive. The first number is the seed ceiling, the best seed that could result from a reasonable best-case scenario for the rest of the season and the committee’s assessment of the team, the middle number is the current seed based on the current position in the bracket ladder, and the last number is the seed floor, the worst seed that could result from a reasonable worst-case scenario for the rest of the season and the committee’s assessment of the team. The seed ceiling could increase or seed floor decrease in extraordinary circumstances.

Yellow: “Probably in”. This color marks the start of the bubble.

Orange: On the tip of the bubble, could go either way. Listed as “Barely in” or “Barely out” based on what side of the cutline they fall in the order.

Red: “Probably out”, teams with a longshot chance to make the NCAA Tournament but are more likely going to the NIT (or worse). Teams in this range that are the highest-rated from their conference are listed as “Needs Auto”, to indicate they need the auto bid to get in but are currently listed in the field.
1 – 2 – 2
2 – 3 – 3
3 – 4 – 4
4 – 4 – 5
5 – 6 – 7
Probably In
Barely In
Probably Out

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