Sermon on the Mount

It happened again. It seems to happen every year around this time. Mount St. Mary's upset their way to a conference tournament championship and earned a bid to March Madness as the automatic qualifier (AQ) from the Northeast Conference despite their 16-16 record. They are the latest in a continuous string of .500 or sub .500 teams to reach the Big Dance. 

And Mount St. Mary's isn't the only so-called AQ team in this tournament. Many of these will be the only team from their conference to advance to the NCAA Tournament. The inclusion of these Cinderella schools is part of what gives March Madness its charm. Giving a team like Mount St. Mary's a chance to take down a team like Villanova or Duke is part of what draws fans to the tournament. 

But the tournament is, at the end of the day, a process to crown a national champion, not a reward for a solid season. And even if it is a reward, many deserving teams are left out because the bracket is obligated to include these AQ teams. 

Shouldn't the tournament selection process be about including the top 68 teams in the country, without consideration of automatically qualifying? The penalty paid by a team like Cal, for instance, isn't that they didn't have a good season, it's that they didn't have that same season while playing in the Horizon League or the Patriot League. 

Take a potential bubble team, BYU. If the Cougars are excluded and Mount St. Mary's remains, it's hard to argue that the top 68 teams made it to the tournament. BYU, after all, played the Mountaineers this season and pummeled Mount St. Mary's by 32 points. 

And BYU isn't alone. Other teams wringing their hands nervously before the final selection is announced include schools like Iowa, Pittsburgh and Colorado. Each of those teams is in the top 50 in RPI ratings, which is a bit like the basketball version of BCS standings. Coastal Carolina, Eastern Kentucky and Wofford, in comparison, are all in the tournament by virtue of their AQ status. None of them are in the top 100 in the RPI. In fact, Coastal Carolina isn't even in the top 200 in the RPI. 

How do you think that would work for football? The playoffs are Florida State, Ohio State, Texas...and for kicks, Mount Union. 

Surely if Cal defeated Florida, it would still be an upset, so that aspect of the tournament's charm isn't lost. And isn't Pittsburgh vs. Arizona a far more intriguing first-round match up than Kansas vs. Stony Brook?

And so what of these Cinderella schools? If not for the AQ process, how will they make it? Play better schools and beat them...at least some of the time. Part of the reason teams like Maryland and NC State might be left out is they played an entire season's-worth of games, week in and week out, against Duke, UNC, Pitt, Clemson, Syracuse, Virginia and on and on and on. But is Cal or Iowa or Colorado better than Stony Brook or Georgia State? Probably on most nights. So what sense does it make that these better teams be left to watch the tournament while teams that aren't as good get a chance to play in it? Perhaps teams will start migrating to different conferences for other reasons. I doubt, however, anyone wants to see Boston College be the Colonial League champions for the next 23 years in a row.