NCAA Basketball Tournament and BCS Need to Find Common Ground

I filled out an a couple of NCAA tournament brackets this year. It's become a civic duty, like exercising your right to vote.

But I have to confess that March Madness lost some of its wow factor for me.

I know I'm not trending with the majority to put it in social network speak. But the tournament seems to follow the same script every year.

It begins on selection Sunday when several schools will whine about being left out of a 68-team field.

Then there are the upsets of highly seeded teams that come in the first and second rounds. This year it was Norfolk State over Missouri and Lehigh defeating Duke.

We will hear the name Cinderella so often that we'll think we're at Disney World and yet it's a misnomer because no NCAA Cinderella has ever been fitted with a glass slipper.

Ultimately, the champion will emerge from a major conference even if Butler (twice), George Mason or Virginia Commonwealth makes it to the Final Four.

My complaint is that the NCAA tournament is too predictable.

And too many teams are invited to the Big Dance. What March Madness needs are more wallflowers.

This is exactly the opposite of what ails college football, which does not have a playoff system in what we used to call Division IA.

I can't make up my mind which is worse, a tournament that is hardly exclusive or a the private club called the BCS.  

The NCAA tournament and BCS are polar opposites.

March Madness would be more exciting for me if the field was scaled back to 48 teams. The immediate impact would be adding more meaning to the regular season, which has just about fallen off the radar.

College football, in turn, would benefit from a 16-team playoff that would ensure enough worthy contenders are included without watering down the product.

Critics of college football complain about the proliferation of bowl games rewards mediocrity. Finish 6-6 or 7-5 and you'll be bowlin' for dollars.

And critics add that the BCS rankings are flawed and arbitrarily produce a computer-generated championship game.

Is the NCAA tournament much better, though?

The selection committee uses the Ratings Percentage Index, or what we reverently refer to as the RPI, along with the eyeball test to pick at-large teams.

And if you are excluded from the tournament, you may get an invitation from the NIT or relatively new College Basketball Invitational.

That means 116 college basketball teams are playing in the postseason.

I'm thinking about putting up a couple of hoops in my driveway and inviting teams 101-116 so that they don't feel left out.

And to think how hoops fans mock football games like the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.

The NCAA tournament continues to be a ratings winner for TV. We'll see how the second week goes after an exhausting few days for sports fans following the tumultuous events in the NFL.

But with a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal with CBS and Turner Broadcasting in place, the likelihood is that the NCAA will have a football playoff implemented before anyone questions whether March Madness has reached the point of diminishing returns.

I'm hoping that when a college football playoff comes, it will be done the right way.

If one could be put in place next season, I would have a field of 16 comprised of the champions from the six BCS conferences, the Mountain West, Mid-American and Conference USA, plus seven at-large berths.

Too many? Consider that in 2011, I counted at least seven teams that won 10 or more games as not making the playoffs in addition to all those schools that won eight or nine games.

No one would object then if we still end up with Alabama and LSU in the championship game.