NCAA selection changing criteria again

Ok, it is less than 24 hours since we learned of the pairings for the yearly NCAA basketball tournament. And every year we have a large controversy as to who got in, and who did not. This year the major discussion of who did not centers around mostly, Virginia Tech, Dayton, Arizona State and Illinois State. All of the talking heads on ESPN are throwing out great arguments as to why those 3 teams deserve to be in, and maybe why this team or that team should not be in.

Every year at the beginning of the season we hear from every available news source that the RPI, (or basketball Ratings Percentage Index), is THE major determining factor as to what team gets into and is left out of the tournament. And some years that works. But looking at this year, that argument does not hold water.

And that is the whole problem with the selection process. It is not quantitative by any known measure. It is purely and completely subjective based on the makeup of the selection committee in any particular year! Now, I would be ok with that, IF the NCAA selection committee were forced to do two things:

1) Before meeting publish the criteria by which the committee will be using to determine the selections. Even if it is only a few days before they meet to do the selection.

2) Fully disclose how the voting went based on that criteria.

That would, I believe, take all of the debate as to "why" a team did or did not make it, and would just shift the debate by the sports media wonks to disagreement. That would be fine.

But as it stands no one has ANY idea how this process ends up with its decisions. The committee chair told ESPN last night that it was the "overall body of work", while last year it was the "overall RPI and schedule". Which clearly indicates that the criteria is shifting from year to year.

Because if the criteria from last year were applied to this year, then teams like Kentucky, Oregon and Kansas St, would NEVER have been selected over any of the teams I mentioned above. And some would counter that UK, UO and KSU had tougher schedules, as shown by the SOS. Wrong! They did not. Not over teams like Ohio State, Virginia Tech and Dayton. So that argument does not hold water either. (BTW, here is the source of my information: Realtime RPI)

What I have learned over the years is that the NCAA selection committee is not unbiased and wants all of the obfuscation it can get every year in the selection process so that they can reward some conferences and punish others. Anytime you can get people arguing over why this team or that team did or did not get in, it deflects them from asking the more pertinent questions. Questions that would back the committee into defending their positions, rather than giving some off the cuff nebulous criteria answer. An answer such as what we had yesterday from the committee chairman.