A Plan To Save March Madness

I’ve been kicking around an idea for some time now.  It does go against the grain, but there is precedence for my thought.  This whole March Madness thing has gotten out of control.  Sixty eight teams, really!  Like one of these so called play in teams will ever win anything.  It’s time to eliminate all the useless peripheral games, and just give me a championship game.There is already a selection committee in place to pick and choose who they deem worthy enough to play in the tournament, but how many man-hours are wasted debating back and forth one team’s merits over another.  Who cares if a “Hot” team is hitting their stride in February, or if a surprise team wins its conference tournament.  They seriously give automatic bids to a team that lucks into a conference title? No thanks.

I say this selection committee (which needs a distinguished official sounding name) should simply take into account some of the rankings already in place.  There’s the ESPN coaches poll, the AP still ranks teams, I think the USA Today has some computer ranking system, there’s the RPI (isn’t that a computer formula too?), and I’m sure if you Googled it you could find another one or two rankings.  Then the committee (it still needs a formal name that would give us an easy to remember acronym) could decide, based off the work that’s already done, who the top two teams are and give us a single solitary game of the ages, every year.  Much simpler.

This committee of  Basketball Championship Selectors should just tell us that Kansas and Ohio State will play for all the marbles.  Or maybe Pittsburgh and Duke should (pun intended) duke it out.  With any luck they’ll let Notre Dame in on the fun.  What ever the B.C.S. says should go. And as far as all the other teams that would be left without a final game send off…  I have thoughts on that too.

I’ll just brainstorm a little here, but they could allow any team with a .500 or better record to “qualify” for 1 more game to cap of their season.  Then allow some corporate sponsors to throw a pile of money at schools to ensure they get the best possible match-up.  Maybe even put together some goody bags for the student athletes, all dependent on which ever sponsors come through with the most money of course.  I know the NCAA frowns upon their student athletes receiving gifts, but this would be different, these swag bags would be from the sponsors that the NCAA approves of.

I know this B.C.S. system that I’m proposing has some flaws, but what plan dosen’t?