Mocking the Media Mock Bracket
Posted by rtmsf on February 17th, 2009We haven’t seen much written on this yet, so we thought it would be worth our 1000th post here at RTC (woohoo!) to mock the media’s mock bracket that came out last Friday. You remember the drill – the NCAA invites twenty distinguished members of the hoops cognoscenti to Indianapolis to go through the same exercise of filling the bracket in twelve hours that the NCAA Selection Committee goes through in five days (we’re still awaiting RTC’s invite). According to Mike DeCourcy, this abridged media experience somehow proves that there’s no time for shenanigans amongst the committee in terms of potential made-for-tv matchups and backroom wheeling and dealing – “demystifying and demythifying” were the words used – even though the fact that the Selection Committee has five full days (vs. 12 hours) to consider other variables, such as ensuring compelling matchups, seems lost on him. Demythifying? We’re still trying to figure out how UNLV was selected over Vanderbilt and Notre Dame in the 2000 Tourney. Oh yeah, Craig Thompson.
Anyway, here’s the media mock bracket (as of last Friday):
Clemson as an overall #2 seed is abominable, and that was true even before the Tigers’ loss to Virginia on Sunday. And we have to agree with the commenters on Decourcy’s piece who take issue with Florida as a #8 seed ranked ahead of SEC leader LSU (#10 seed). He’s right in that LSU’s out-of-conference schedule reads like a Big South slate, but credit has to be given for essentially dominating a BCS conference, which is what LSU at 9-1 has done to date. The fairer way would have been to give both #9 seeds and be done with that dilemma. Butler as a #3 seed, Utah as a #5 seed and USC as a #9 seed are so absurd it’s not even worth further mention.
We were also really surprised to see Georgetown in the bracket anywhere, much less as a #10 seed. The Hoyas have top-tier talent and a decent RPI, but goodness, at 13-9 and 4-7 in the Big East at the time of this bracket, this has every hallmark of a rep pick. And what happened at the #11-seed level of this bracket? Cornell (ok, which reporter went to Cornell?), South Carolina (ok), Davidson (will be higher) and Arizona (will be a good bit higher)? Decourcy mentioned the Davidson dilemma, but if the Wildcats win the SoCon again, they’ll be no lower than a #10 this year – mark that down.
Cross-referencing with our bracketologist Zach Hayes’ latest report which came out yesterday, we see that our guy’s analysis is significantly stronger and well contemplated than the bracket that the media came up with by themselves. Seriously, we can’t believe some of their seeding selections. This is comprised of America’s college hoops experts? Wethinks that the bloggers could have done a better job, even in such a small slice of time as twelve hours.
Update: we were tipped to Kyle Whelliston’s excellent column describing the events of the media mock selection process, and it makes things considerably clearer. First, the mock committee were given scenarios based on automatic qualifiers that helps to explain why some of the seedings are out of whack with current relative positions; second, there was a major technical glitch during the proceedings that led to the seed lines 6 and below getting filled based purely on RPI. Whelliston made pains to say that this is not how it would typically go. DeCourcy never mentioned it. This makes us feel a little better about the process, and the resultant bracket, although we still don’t think that it proves anything about conference affiliation considerations and/or other backroom shenanigans. After all, the real committee has more time and are better versed in how to do this.
I was shocked when I saw their bracket. That sat together for how long in a conference room and that’s the best they could come up with? I know the selection committee can do some crazy things and they were trying to mock the selection committee, but this bracket is absolutely absurd.
DeCourcy makes it seem like being in a room for 12 hrs is akin to Guantanamo, but we guess he probably never actually did any work in college so it might make sense. There’s no excuse for this bracket, though. None.
I agree with most of what you said, however. Saying that if Davidson wins the SoCon again gets them no lower than a #10 is probably accurate, but they don’t have Davidson winning the SoCon. They have the College of Charleston in at a #13 seed, now I would love to see this (it’s my alma mater) but most likely, Davidson will plow through the SoCon tournament again this year.
To add, Mizzou at a #4 is quite a stretch.
From what I’ve read elsewhere (Seth Davis’ column), the reporters were given a set of circumstances that had “unfolded” in conference tournaments, one of which was Georgetown reaching the Big East Tournament Final. Obviously that doesn’t explain Cornell as an 11 seed. However, it does make sense that to try to simulate the real deal that they’d throw conference tournament situations at the committee so that they have to adjust.
Since they have had all of these “Big Name” reporters doing this mock bracket the last few years, maybe next year can be the Blogosphere writers taking part in the Mock Draft. :)
Please read Kyle Whelliston’s post on the mock selection process. It explains pretty much every decision made in this bracket.
Cornell is an 11 seed because of competition/location restrictions. Most of the other “odd” seedings are because of NCAA rules regarding where teams can be placed or because the NCAA decided certain teams we assume will win their conference did not.
As for “Big Name” reporters, well, Whelliston is a blogger, and he was there, and like I said, his column explains pretty much everything.
Tim – thanks for the tip on Whelliston, it does make things a lot clearer. The key takeaway we read from it is that there were technical issues that caused the mock cmte to seed lines 6 and below based solely on RPI. Apparently they were the guinea pigs in terms of testing out this new software.
Thanks for pointing out Whelliston’s post. It’s a pretty good column. I’m not sure if rtmsf was aware of the computer simulation of the conference tournaments, which I think is absurd. I know there is some randomness in the conference tournaments (look at a mediocre Georgia team winning the SEC title last year), but to use computer-generated results to predict who will win a conference tournament seems pretty sketchy to me.
Re: Cornell. Could you explain the competition/location restrictions that make a team with a RPI of 110 and SOS of 276 (today’s numbers because I don’t know how to find their numbers from that day) into a #11 seed?
One thing about the NCAA’s inclusion of non-mainstream media. I think citing Whelliston as simply a “blogger” is somewhat disingenuous since he worked for ESPN before their recent fiasco so he is more of a hybrid than almost any other college basketball blogger.
Ok. As you can see we don’t coordinate our comments, so refer to rtmsf’s comment for his thoughts instead of my speculation on his thoughts.