The NCAA selection committee has issued a formal apology to college basketball fans for seeding teams too accurately this year, which has resulted in a disastrous Final Four consisting solely of incredibly talented, exciting, well-coached basketball teams. To prevent similar debacles from occurring in future tournaments, the NCAA has officially decided to seed teams incorrectly from now on in the hopes of increasing the propensity for sportstalk-fueling upsets."All these good teams in the Final Four this year, I feel like we really dropped the ball," said Gary D. Walters, head of the NCAA Men's Basketball selection committee. "Fans don't want to see really outstanding teams playing basketball well and therefore earning spots in the finals against one another. Something had to be done to get some upsets going, and we feel like this new 'wrong seeding' plan might do the trick."
The new seeding plan carries the following mandates:
- The top team in the Big East can be seeded no higher than number four, and all other teams in the Big East will be seeded 11 or lower, allowing people to say "wow, the Big East really got screwed this year, I could easily see (Pitt/Marquette/Louisville etc.) knocking off a three seed."
- Three of the four number one seeds will be given to Big Ten teams, although in the event that a legitimate team emerges from the Big Ten, like this year's Ohio State, they will be dropped to an 8 seed and immediately labelled a "Cinderella."
- Any teams that most people haven't heard of (i.e., Memphis, Butler, Southern Ill.) will be seeded no higher than 13, regardless of their record.
- If no double-digit seeds make the Final Four, the lowest-seeded remaining team will instantly be changed to a 15 seed, and everyone will have root for them, including fans of the three other remaining teams.
- Finally, the entire PAC-10 will automatically make the tournament and be given seeds 2 through 6.
"I hope this new plan works," said Walters, "because I really don't want fans to be tortured like they have been this year. Florida / UCLA and Ohio State / Georgetown? Who's going to want to watch this crap? People keep telling me 'I miss George Mason, I miss...' then they try to think of another example like George Mason and can't but still, it makes me feel really guilty for putting them through these predictable-in-retrospect catastrophes."
"Next year," added Walters, "when someone at the water cooler says 'hey, how bout North Carolina? Ten seed making it to the Final Four, huh?' I'll know that I've done my job right."
3 comments:
A majority of the entire ACC was seeded 1-6, how'd that turn out?
One thing about the tourney & high seeds... Arguing that "every high seeded team won, and therefore the committee did a good job" is not quite accurate. If the committee truly wanted no upsets, they would rank the teams 1 through 16 and then have the following teams play each other:
1 vs 9
5 vs 13
3 vs 11
7 vs 15
2 vs 10
6 vs 14
4 vs 12
8 vs 16
Of course this sort of conspiracy thing is ridiculous but if some teams were seeded too high and others too low to fit this pattern (a team that should get a 13 seed gets a 14 or 15, a team that should be a 3 gets a 4 or 5) there could very well be fewer upsets than there should be.
Most people have never heard of Memphis? You do know the city, right? Elvis, Beale Street, barbeque...and a school, a school called Memphis.
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