I guess it makes sense but didn’t know it was up to all leagues independently. Ivy League doesn’t have a tourney. Are they the only one?
I had no idea…
- Thread starter dahliaclone
- Start date
I’ve always said the tournament format screws the small schools that worked hard to win their league but I guess the revenue is too big to pass up.
Drake probably wouldn't be going without their tournament.
It also helps the conference to get the hottest team into the tournament for the smaller conferences.
I think it is up to the conference to determine how they decide who they will send to the tournament. I don't know if the choice is simply you have to choose between conference and tournament champs or not. But yes most of the small leagues would be better off sending their regular season champ. One scenario where I could see it being different is if the league had their best player injured for part of the year, but that seems rare.
Ivy League actually added a tourney a couple years ago too. So now all conference representatives are determined by the tourneys. $$$ rules all
The fun part of CBB is that you're still alive for a national title until that last loss.
Money grab.
I see baseball as the same way. If a team plays 162 games and comes out on top then they should go to the World Series
Everything else is a money grab.
I can't imagine the smaller conferences bring in that much $$ for their tournaments do they? It seems to me like it's more an incentive to keep every team engaged knowing they still have a chance to make the NCAA tournament. Otherwise you have teams at the beginning of February with nothing to play for and 7-8 games left to play.
An outcome of top seeds losing early was the creation of the single bye / double bye / triple bye tournaments. This makes it more difficult for a lower seeded team to eliminate a top seed early. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see the Big XII adopt similar to what the B1G has if we expand to 16 teams.
If any conference's regular-season champion doesn't win the tournament, they are at least guaranteed a spot in the NIT, so it's still worth something. I just looked it up to confirm my memory. When they reduced the NIT field for 2021, that didn't apply, but they restored that rule last year.
To be specific, Ivy added tournament in 2017. It's still modest compared to most of the other conferences, only the top 4 compete in it (semifinal & final).
I think this actually makes alot of sense. You have some of these tournaments where a lower seed gets hot for a few games and gets in the tournament. It really makes the regular season pointless. At least make the regular season matter somewhat in qualifying for the conference tournament.
Almost acts as a giant playoff where, technically, any team could win.
While it does happen where a low seeded team will win a conference tournament, its more common for it to play out like the Missouri Valley did this year. Bradley and Drake split the season series (both winning at home) and were within a game of each other in the conference standings. Settling it on a neutral court to see who makes the NCAAs seems like the best method to me in that situation. I agree with others that if you wanted to set up a conference tournament with a multi-bye format or some teams not making the conference tournament, like in the Ivy, that is a good way to reward regular season conference performance while still having the conference tournament decide who gets the auto bid.
There are more practical reasons for the multiple bye tournaments as well. A venue can really only host a maximum of four games a day so when you get past 12 teams (see the original Big 12 brackets) you have to either leave some teams out, have play in games at home sites, have teams play one day, sit a day and then play again while other teams are playing a round at the venue or give top teams multiple byes so only 4 games are played each day.
Generally you don't want to have fans have a down day because they are less likely to travel and attend if their team isn't going to have the chance to play every day.
You could also have games played at multiple venues in the same city as well, but ticketing becomes a nightmare.
It's all relative of course but I would guess that for the smaller conferences those conference tournaments are their biggest source of TV revenue all year. Conferences that might be on espn+ if theyre lucky for their regular season games find their way onto the main linear networks
My impractical but unique bracket idea once upon a time was to give regular season winner a bid, tourney winner a bid, and if you won both a bye. Pure chaos that just wouldn't work.
I may have been under the influence.
I may have been under the influence.
