NCAA Tournament Pod System Needs Changes

The NCAA needs to change its pod system for the Division I men’s basketball tournament. The NCAA created the pod system to keep as many tournament teams as close to their homes as possible for the first and second rounds of the tournament. The more local interest in tournament games the better the ticket sales as the logic goes.   

However, there is too much bias and inconsistency in the way teams are assigned to the sub-regional sites which has become glaringly obvious over the last three years.

The primary beneficiary of the pod system seems to be North Carolina, which has played the first two rounds in the state of North Carolina for three straight years—Winston-Salem in 2007, Raleigh in 2008, and Greensboro in 2009. On top of that, UNC was placed in the East Region in 2008 whose regional was played in Charlotte.

UNC had a decisive home court advantage in all of these locations. Louisville was talented enough to beat UNC in the East Regional final in 2008, but had to play UNC in what was a road game for the Cardinals. Had the game been played on a true neutral court, nobody can say for sure that the Tar Heels would have still won. LSU was capable of beating UNC on a neutral court this year but instead had the difficult task of beating the Tar Heels in Greensboro.

One must understand that when a public university like UNC gets to play in its home state, the advantage is not simply that they are closer to their campus location thus making fan travel easier. UNC is the flagship state university of North Carolina drawing the majority of its students from within the state and having a large alumni fan base in all major cities of the state.

UNC fans in Raleigh, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Charlotte can fill up the arenas for UNC tournament games without any help from fans traveling from Chapel Hill. That is the true advantage that UNC gets by playing in their home state for three consecutive years and many more times than any other school that I can think of since the Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

The rationale that I have read and heard from fans and the sports media is that UNC deserves the home court advantage for having earned a No. 1 seed. The problem is they did not earn that seed as the seeding assignments are subjective and decided by a committee.

Memphis could have been a No. 1 seed in place of any of the four No. 1s this year. The NCAA never said that No. 1 seeds get to play at home as a reward. Furthermore, this year’s other No. 1 seeds—Louisville, Pitt, and UConn—did not get the same benefit as UNC.

In fact, Ohio State did get to play in Dayton as an eight seed and had it beaten Siena would have played the Tournament’s overall No. 1 Louisville in what would have been a clear advantage to Ohio State.

Villanova did play in Philadelphia as a No. 3 seed. The only thing the NCAA has said is that the top four seeds in each region get protection against playing a team with home court advantage in the first round and that is it.  The unofficial reward for being a one seed is you get to play a No. 16 that historically has virtually no chance of beating you thus having a slightly easier path to the Final Four.

There were some who questioned Villanova getting to play in Philadelphia. My response is that Villanova did not get to play in Philadelphia for three straight years the way UNC got to play in its home state for three straight years.

Under the pod system, schools are going to get to play in or near their home cities or home states at some point but it was not designed to benefit one school more than anybody else and certainly not for three straight years.

Another rationale I have heard about UNC playing at home is that it is just coincidence since the NCAA pre-selects sites. It just so happens that UNC is almost always a top seed, so they are placed in their home state with the rationale that they earned it.

My response is that the NCAA knows what all college basketball fans know: UNC is a perennial basketball power and with few exceptions is a contender for the national title every year. Thus, the NCAA is selecting sites in the state of North Carolina almost every year with full knowledge that they will likely place the Tar Heels in any sub-regional or regional hosted in the state unless it is of course hosted in Chapel Hill, which brings me to my final point.

Chapel Hill has not hosted the NCAA Tournament since 1988. Is it just a coincidence that the NCAA has rotated tournament games among Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Charlotte while somehow avoiding UNC’s home court in one of the best college towns in the country?

It is not a coincidence since the NCAA knows it would not be able to place UNC in Chapel Hill since the Tournament rules prevents teams from playing on their home court.

So, what is the solution? The NCAA needs to create a rule that limits a team to playing in its home state to once every three years during the first two rounds and no team should ever be allowed a home court advantage during the regional rounds.

Also, the NCAA should be rotating sites in a manner that avoids using any one state in consecutive years so you can prevent a team like Kansas from playing in Kansas City, Missouri where Kansas can draw a home court advantage despite it being another state.