Can we fix the First Four next season? Please?

I'll be honest -- I hate the idea of play-in games.

You have five months and 30-some odd games to "play-in" to the tournament. Getting a bonus game because you weren't quite good enough makes no sense. This is big time, Division I college basketball. Its not CYO. We shouldn't give everyone a trophy for participating.

That said, I'm a realest. I know that as the tournament generates more and more revenue, its going to get bigger and bigger. I can accept the First Four, but if we are going to have it, we might as well get it right.


(Before I rant about the play-in games, let me first rant about, well, the name of the play-in games. The rant before the rant, if you will.

Calling the four games that occur in Dayton this week the first round is, frankly, stupid. Everyone knows that they are play-in games. Why? Because no one that is participating in an NCAA Tournament pool is forced to pick a winner, the same way that no one was forced to pick a winner last season when there was just one play-in game. I can throw a bunch of Purina Puppy Chow into a bowl, dress it up nice, and call if beef tips from Oklahoma Joe's, but is anyone going to believe it. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of us aren't that stupid.

Call the games the First Four. Refer to them as play-in games. No one believes the tournament was structured so that 60 teams could get a "first round bye".)

The 16 seeds should not be forced to participate in the play-in games.

UNC-Asheville and Arkansas-Little Rock played a great game in the First Four opener on Tuesday night. Asheville came back from 11 down in the second half, got a game-tying three from Matt Dickey with just 10.5 seconds left, and eventually won in overtime. It was dramatic, it was fun, it was everything that March Madness is about.

But no one is going to be talking about that game tomorrow.

What everyone is going to be talking about is the snoozer between Clemson and UAB, where the Tigers obliterated a Blazer team that did not look like they belonged in the Big Dance. You'll see columns bashing the selection process or Conference USA. You'll hear radio show hosts wax poetic about how Colorado or Alabama or Virginia Tech deserved to get in over them.

What is the sense of forcing a team that earned their way into the tournament to, once again, earn the right to participate in the main event? Regardless of how good the game is, it will be overshadowed by whatever happens in the second, more meaningful-to-the-masses, game.

I can't be the only one that thinks seeing Marquette playing Missouri or Georgia playing Michigan State would have drawn more eyeballs and more interest that UNCA and UALR. Hell, those games would have made Clemson-UAB look insignificant.

And frankly, Marquette, Missouri, Georgia, and Michigan State were more deserving of having their week blown up than UNCA or UALR.

I understand the argument that regular season conference champions should get the automatic bids. Its the best determinant of who is the best team in a conference. I also understand the sentiment there should be no automatic bids. The NCAA Tournament is supposed to be the 68 best teams in the country, right? There is no way you can tell me that UNCA is better than, say, Seton Hall or Washington State.

But based on the way the current rules are set up, the way you earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament is by winning your conference tournament.

UNCA and UALR both did that.

Marquette, Missouri, Georgia, and Michigan State all backed into the NCAA Tournament, relying on the strength of their conference and the quality of their losses to get in. I think it is safe to say that based on preseason expectations and talent level, all four of those teams had a disappointing seasons.

UNC-Asheville and Arkansas-Little Rock -- and UT-San Antonio and Alabama State -- won the right, based on our rules, to play in the NCAA Tournament.

And we should let them do just that.

Not schlep them off to Dayton to have their numbers cut in half.

Have the big boys square off for the right to get a shot at a four or five seed.

They are more deserving and will draw more eyeballs.

Isn't that what the NCAA is about?
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NCAA "First Four" to take place in Dayton

Today the NCAA made one of the more logical decisions they've made in some time. They have decided to hold the four first round play-in games at the UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio.

While this is a logical choice for many reasons, most of which I will get to momentarily, I would like to point out that the NCAA is developing a terrible habit of not taking any of my advice. I have all the answers to the conference expansion conundrum, yet they refuse to return my emails. I even petitioned to have William & Mary change their mascot from "the Tribe" to "the Honey Badgers" and they shot me down. (OK, I'm lying. But isn't that an awesome name?)

But I digress. The NCAA did get it right with this decision.

With second and third round games taking place in Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Tampa, Tulsa, Tuscon, and Washington D.C, the first round site should be as central as possible to all the sites, and Dayton, Ohio is smack-dab in the middle.

The UD Arena holds roughly 14,000 which is an ideal size for an opening round game. Last year, the official attendance for the play-in game featuring Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Winthrop was 8,205. In 2009, when Morehead State defeated Alabama State in the play-in game, the attendance was listed at nearly 11,000. As I've mentioned before, there is nothing worse than seeing a bunch of empty sections in the upper deck, so an arena with a 14,000-seat capacity is perfect for basically a meaningless tournament game.


Now, with four games instead of one, the attendance in 2011 is sure to increase. If the NCAA had decided to have four different sites host play-in games, there is no guarantee that attendance would improve. In fact, I would guess that the attendance might actually decrease if they did this, unless the NCAA decided to have the last at-large teams play in the opening round instead of the lowest-ranked teams. The last at-larges tend to be bigger schools with bigger followings, hence more fans attending and watching the games.

Dayton is no Gotham City, but it is suitable enough for a two-day tournament session. The University of Dayton had the highest average attendance of any Atlantic-10 team in 2010, with 12,260 fans showing up for each home game. Overall, UD was 28th in home attendance last year, which was higher than Georgetown, Kansas State, Wake Forest, Missouri and a bunch of other BCS-conference schools. In short, Dayton has basketball fans, and even if the Flyers aren't playing, there will certainly be enough fans to fill the UD Arena.

In the past, the play-in game had been held on ESPN, which is available on standard cable. The first four games in 2011 will be nationally televised in primetime on Turner Broadcasting’s truTV, as part of the NCAA’s 14-year broadcast agreement with Turner and CBS. Now, I don't watch a lot of television, but I consider myself pretty up-to-date on pop culture. But up until right now, I had never even heard of truTV. If I had to guess, it's probably located on the dial somewhere between the Home & Garden network and whatever channel airs Ninja Warrior.

My only other complaint with the NCAA on this subject is the naming of the play-in round. Instead of naming it the "First Four", the "Opening Round", or even the "Play-in Round", they have decided to call it the "First Round". Thus, the real first and second rounds will be known as the second and third rounds. How can you have a first round in which not all the teams participate?

But in general, the NCAA made the right choice. Now I just have to determine which way to point my rabbit-ear antennae in order to get truTV.
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