{"id":134,"date":"2008-03-17T13:21:31","date_gmt":"2008-03-17T18:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=134"},"modified":"2008-03-17T13:25:11","modified_gmt":"2008-03-17T18:25:11","slug":"yet-another-pet-peeve-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=134","title":{"rendered":"Yet Another Pet Peeve&#8211;Who is Looking Out for the Little Guy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have never claimed to be the protector of all things &#8220;mid-major.&#8221;\u00a0 And, I am very much opposed to crazy conspiracy theories, so I am going to tread lightly on how I phrase today&#8217;s Pet Peeve.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\" width=\"160\" src=\"http:\/\/www.eog.com\/uploadedImages\/images\/NCAAB\/060210-gonzaga-basketball.jpg\" height=\"200\" \/>I think the NCAA Committee, for the upteenth year in a row, screwed the &#8220;Little Guy.&#8221;\u00a0 I am not claiming that this is a conscious intentional occurrence (though, there is a TON of money involved in the television deals that would undoubtably prefer\u00a0the least possible small schools beyond the first round), but I believe it is happening, and it is having a major effect on the brackets that we love so much.<\/p>\n<p>Take the following aspects of this year&#8217;s bracket:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Illinois St. and VCU were certainly in the &#8220;bubble&#8221; discussion.\u00a0 I see the flaws in their resumes and also cannot really make a good case that either of them should be replacing someone who was chosen (though, personally, I would probably have taken Illinois St. over Villanova or Baylor, but I do not feel that strong either way).\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>In my opinion, there are eight or nine quality &#8220;mid-major&#8221; teams in the field.\u00a0 Just looking at it objectively, there are\u00a09 mid-major teams that received a 12-seed or better.\u00a0 Six of these teams are playing against another one of these eight.\u00a0 In fact, of the four at-large bids given to mid-major schools, two of them are playing against OTHER MID-MAJOR SCHOOLS.\u00a0 S. Alabama got a 10-seed, but drew Butler.\u00a0 Gonzaga got a 7-seed, but drew Davidson (in Raleigh).\u00a0 The other two mid-major at-larges were St. Mary&#8217;s, who is playing Miami, and BYU (not really a mid-major program, just in a mid-major conference), who drew Texas A&amp;M.\u00a0 Also, you have auto-bid Drake getting a 5-seed, but drawing mid-major auto-bid sleeper W. Kentucky.\u00a0 I know the Committee has said repeatedly that they do not &#8220;set up matchups,&#8221; they just pick the seeds and the regions and plug them in, so I guess this is just a coincidence.<\/li>\n<li>Only one of the &#8220;protected seeds&#8221; (1 through 4 seeds in each region are considered &#8220;protected&#8221;) went to a non-Big 6 Conference team&#8211;Xavier&#8211;and who do they draw as their 14th-seeded opponent?\u00a0 An SEC team?\u00a0 Granted a pretty bad SEC team, but still, Georgia just won the SEC tournament.\u00a0 So, the only non-Big 6 protected seed draws the only Big 6 team in the below a 12-seed?\u00a0 Again, probably another explainable coincidence.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" align=\"left\" width=\"230\" src=\"http:\/\/www.roanoke.com\/entertainment\/images\/io75mason.jpg\" height=\"150\" \/>I know, I know that\u00a0each of these, by itself, is completely explainable and appears to be merely coincidental, but if taken as a whole, might there be reason to believe that the Committee just continues to protect the Big Guys even though the Little Guys have proven time and time again in recent years that they are just as good?\u00a0 I am not saying that this is a conscious, vindictive, or even economically-driven &#8220;conspiracy&#8221; to get as few Little Guys in the later rounds as possible&#8211;and, honestly, I do not know if it doesn&#8217;t make for a better tournament sometimes&#8211;but is it not possible that this is just another indication of a subconcious bias against smaller programs?<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for listening, friends&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have never claimed to be the protector of all things &#8220;mid-major.&#8221;\u00a0 And, I am very much opposed to crazy conspiracy theories, so I am going to tread lightly on how I phrase today&#8217;s Pet Peeve. I think the NCAA &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=134\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[226,230,234,232,231,228,227,229,233],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college-hoops","tag-2008-ncaa-tournament","tag-butler","tag-byu","tag-davidson","tag-drake","tag-george-mason","tag-gonzaga","tag-salabama","tag-st-marys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}