Tagged As: basketball, Sports, March Madness, Michigan State, NCAA Tournament, Big Ten, Big East

I just read some disturbing news today during my annual college basketball cram session. I just read that the Big Ten could have eight teams in the NCAA Tournament. That is more than the amazing ACC and the mighty Big East hope to have in the tournament. I am a huge Big Ten sports fan, but even I think that is ridiculous.

I know the Big Ten has been a solid conference this season, turning out much better than anyone expected. They have seven 20-win teams and one team at 19 wins. They lost some huge games, but managed to pull out some impressive collective wins over UCLA, Duke, and Louisville. They even finished 5-6 in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.

Still, the NCAA Tournament calls a game where Big Ten brutality is punished and sending eight teams (or one-eighth of the field) is simply going to end in far too many first round losses for a respectable power conference to have.

I am fine with Michigan State getting in as a number two or three seed (with a very slim shot at a number one seed), and Illinois, Purdue, Ohio State, and Wisconsin getting in somewhere between the sixth and the ninth seed, but I do not want to see three Big Ten teams (Michigan, Minnesota, and Penn State) being decimated as double-digit losers.

It just looks bad for the league and reinforces the stereotype that here in the Midwest we eat cheese by the bricks and produce 6-foot-8 farmer-strong, white boy-slow basketball players. Stop the madness this March at five. These five teams should hopefully make it beyond the first round and perhaps one or two will make it far enough to challenge the likes of UNC, Duke, the UConn Huskies, or the Pittsburgh Panthers.

I know it has been said that the selection committee does not look at conferences when picking teams, but maybe they should. Maybe they should look at the bottom five or six seeds in each region and issue a decree that no school from a power conference will get those seeds unless they improbably win their conference tournament.

I would not mind seeing a few more mid-major schools and a few more schools that are playing out of their mind because their dinky student population never expected to play in anything bigger than the NIT.

Let me see a few more schools like Radford out of the Big South or North Dakota out of the Summit League. Let me see players I will never hear of again, like Artsiom Parakhousi. Let me watch with glee as some of these small colleges win in purely miraculous fashion, typifying what I want March Madness to be. Let the game seem a little more foreign before the power houses again vie for the championship.

March Madness Tickets