After criticism of NCAA tournament-seeding procedures that sent more teams than necessary to first-round sites that were not in their area of the country, the selection committee will make an effort to keep as many teams as close to home as possible this post-season.
The issue of travel has been brought up several times in the past, but last season’s Boise regional brought the issue to a head. The Boise regional was criticized because of the eight teams playing, only one team was from west of the Mississippi, and the majority of the regional was made up of teams that could be considered East Coast universities.
“That incident may have been the straw that made us move to this,” said NCAA Tournament Chair Lee Fowler. “We have been discussing it for two or three years for how we can keep people closer to home and not have them travel so far. We spent a couple of days on it this summer, and we feel this will be something that will really improve the opportunity for people to see their teams play.”
The new emphasis will be to keep not only the one and two seeds close to home, but to allow third, fourth, and in some situations fifth seeds within a reasonable distance.
“We would try to keep a five close to home also,” said Fowler. “The only thing we noticed was that when you get to five, six and seven, you have other principles kicking in. Sometimes they might have to leave because another team in their league is already in.”
RPI less important: Among the factors that the NCAA selection committee uses to decide which teams will gain a tournament spot is RPI. The RPI is an index that accounts for teams’ strength of schedule and opponents’ strength of schedule and results. This ranking, which fans can easily access, is thought by many to be an accurate reading of the top 64 teams in the nation.
However, because conference champions receive automatic bids, it is impossible for the committee to grant spots to the top 64 teams. The NCAA does not follow the RPI order and has lately tried to downplay the importance of a team’s RPI in selection.
“It is only one factor, but one of the few that the fans can see on paper,” said Fowler. “We use RPI like we use all the other factors. A lot of times, after the process is over, we may catch ourselves wondering what happened with the RPIs, but we don’t go by just the RPI, just like we don’t do some other things people think we do in the room.”
While the RPI is a very visible measurement of a team’s play, the selection committee maintains that it also takes into account each committee member’s individual thoughts on the teams that they have seen play throughout the season.
“The good news is we have 10 people in the room from all over the country,” said Fowler. “They have a lot of those opinions, and we get together and decide by secret ballots what these 10 people think about all these teams.”
