The SMCAA Tournament 2010 – One Crazy Idea

    As I posted a couple of days ago (NCAA expanding to 96 teams is a GOOD thing), I figured if the NCAA was going to expand to 96 teams, why not keep going and go to 128?  Well, that got me to thinking…Why couldn’t it work with putting all 347 NCAA teams into one big tournament at the end of the year?  After tinkering with some of the particulars, I think I have something that could be worth trying.  So, I’m proud to announce I will be conducting the 2010 SMCAA TOURNAMENT.  Now, let’s lay down the basics of how this is going to work.

·    The first week of the regular season will be moved up to the 1st week of November.  (We’re almost there already.)

·    All of the conference tournaments will be eliminated.  No need for them to be played since everyone is in.

·    The postseason will only have to be expanded by 1 week to 4 weeks.

·    Instead of having a Final Four, there will be an Elite Eight at the end of the tournament.

·    There will be 8 regions (E, NE, S, SE, N, NW, S, SW), each with 43 or 44 teams.

·    There will be an advantage for the top seeds in each region as they will be placed in the most appropriate region.  While this may not be advantageous for all of the top seeds, the effort will be made to keep them as close to home as possible.

·    The first week will reduce the field from 347 to 128 teams. The second week from 128 to 32 teams.  The third week from 32 to 8 teams.  And the Elite Eight will be the final weekend.

·    For seeding purposes, I will be using the College Basketball Rating Comparison from Massey Ratings which should give a good general strength of the teams after the season concludes.

·    Games will be simulated using the Sim Matchup from What If Sports. (By the way, a very cool website…definitely worth checking out.)

·    Yes, there will also be a television schedule.  All games will be shown on the SMPN family of networks and the schedule will be posted to show how it could work.

·    The plan is to have the brackets announced next Wed. and Thurs. with the schedule announced next Friday and games to start the following Monday.

·    There will be game recaps for every game and will be posted here as we go through the tournament.

So, there it is.  I must say I’m looking forward to this.  How similar will it be to this year’s NCAA Tournament?  It’s going be fun to find out.