Terry Mitchell

No Conference Championship, No Number One Seed



Posted: Monday, March 16, 2009

by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com

No conference tournament title, no number one seed in the NCAA basketball tournament. At least, that's the way it should be. In addition, any team that fails to win its conference tournament should be forbidden from playing in its natural region or at the first and second round location that's closest to its home.

Now, back to reality. Three of this year's four number one seeds did not win their conference tournaments. The only exception was Louisville, which won the Big East tournament.

For most top-ten teams, their conference tournaments are virtually meaningless -- just something to cruise through while holding back for the big dance.  It reminds me of the way some NFL teams that have already clinched top positions in the playoffs just go through the motions during the last weekend of the season.

However, it wasn't always this way. Once upon a time, conference tournaments actually meant something. And a large number of the games were intense nail-biters. That's because the NCAA tournament invited only one team per conference -- it's champion.

This meant that a team from a conference that had a post-season tournament (only a handful of them did back then) had to win it to qualify for the NCAA tournament. It did not matter how highly ranked that team was. Later, the rules were changed to allow up to one other team from each conference. Finally, in the late 1970's, all limits on the number of participants per conference were removed.

These conference tournaments are big events that people shell out their hard-earned money to attend. I believe they should once again have something riding on them for more than just the "bubble" teams.
 
Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports.

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