And why are southern schools now in "The Big East"?

March 13, 2009 11:19 AM

What is the point of these college basketball conference tournaments held just before the national "March Madness" tournament?

A team's regular season record determines their fate in the national tournament. If a big school loses in a conference tournament it has no bearing on its place in the national tournament. So why have conference tournaments?

posted by Zambrano to sports, hobbies, & recreation (19 comments total)

The winners of the conference tournaments get an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
posted by deepscene at 11:27 AM on March 13 [2 favorites]

The schools make some money off tickets and concessions and whatnot, the players who don't make it to the big dance get to at least have the pride of being conference champions or runners-up or whatever, the fans get to watch a few basketball games--I guess I might not understand your question.
posted by box at 11:27 AM on March 13

A team's regular season record determines their fate in the national tournament. If a big school loses in a conference tournament it has no bearing on its place in the national tournament.

Yeah, this is just faulty information. Like deepscene says, conference champions (whether won through regular-season record or tournament) are automatically in the tournament. Two teams play in. Everyone else gets an at-large bid.
posted by carsonb at 11:37 AM on March 13

For the vast majority of Division One teams (there are 300+ Div 1 programs, only about 100 of them are in power conferences)
The only conference where teams can be relatively confident of getting am at-large bid w/ a winning recored in the conference are:
Big East
ACC
SEC
Big Ten
Big XII
Pac-10

Yes our course other conferences consistently get at large bids but usually one or two + the tourney winner.
posted by JPD at 11:37 AM on March 13

It makes for some upsets and cinderella teams. For example, my sort of alma mater, Umass, sucks right now. They had no shot at getting an at-large bid. However, were they to pull off an amazing run in the Atlantic 10 tourney (they did not), they would get the automatic bid, and the best team in the A-10, Xavier this year I think, would probably get an at large instead. So it gives teams something to play for, as well as confrence champ bragging rights.

As for schools from the south playing in the Big East, well, I imagine they are mostly considered "east coast" schools, and that is more about the biz of college sports and not actual geography. Many confrences have no geographical descriptor in their names- the Patriot league, CONFUSA, Colonial Athletic, etc.
posted by vrakatar at 11:38 AM on March 13

Wikipedia on Selection Sunday
posted by carsonb at 11:38 AM on March 13

Would it be out of line to suggest that part of it is just the money...
posted by HuronBob at 11:39 AM on March 13

The winners of the conference tournaments get an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

This is basically it. All of the the little teeny-tiny conferences are only going to send one team to the NCAAs, and the conference tournament determines who it is. Because of this, some highly superior team in one of the small conferences gets screwed every year because they get upset in their conference tournament, letting a lesser team into the NCAAs (unless the superior team is somehow good enough to land an at-large bid). So for those guys, it's basically an extension of the tournament itself.

For the major conferences, like the Big 10, ACC, Big East, and others, the conference tournaments are a way for teams to sneak into the NCAAs or improve their seeding by playing better than they did during the regular season. So, if a middle of the road team that's on the bubble for an at-large bid does exceptionally well in its conference tournament, that might push them over the hump to get a bid, or move them from a 10 seed to an 8 or something similar. If they actually manage to win the tournament, they'll get in outright, but that generally doesn't mean as much for conferences like the ACC where half the teams get in every year.
posted by LionIndex at 11:42 AM on March 13

Also - Southern schools have been in the Big East for quite some time, but you're probably noticing them now because the ACC raided the Big East for a couple of their teams to get a better position in the BCS by having enough teams to have a football conference championship and two divisions. The ACC picked up the University of Miami, Boston College, and Virginia Tech (obviously, Tech and Miami are in the South, so your premise is a little flawed). The Big East then stole some teams from Conference USA (e.g. Cincinnati, Louisville) to make up for it, plus maybe a few others I don't know about.
posted by LionIndex at 11:56 AM on March 13

The winners of the conference tournaments get an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

True, but it's not a pre-requisite to have a tournament to crown a champion. The Big Ten just started their tournament about 10 years ago, prior to that I assume the team with the best conference record was the champion.
posted by brandman at 12:06 PM on March 13

If a big school loses in a conference tournament it has no bearing on its place in the national tournament.

Figuring out the actual seedings and the placement of each team on the 64-team bracket is as much subjective art as it is objective "Tab A goes into Slot A" science. If Big State U loses in its conference tournament, that will be factored into the thinking somehow. Conceivably, they could lose a seeding, be moved to a different region, or be lined up against teams undergoing similar at-large berth re-alignment because of their late-season performance.

Seeing as how, historically, there is nearly always a HUGE upset in the first round (e.g. Steve Nash's coming out party in '93, Santa Clara vs. Arizona), this "bracketology" is incredibly important.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:33 PM on March 13

For the conferences where multiple teams make the NCAA Tournament every year, my understanding is that it's a money/attention thing. The schools make a lot more from the conference tournament than they would with the regular season games they lose as a result of it. They also get attention at the end of the season from the media/fans that would not exist if there was just (the end of) the regular season.
posted by EatenByAGrue at 2:37 PM on March 13

Other than for money, these conference championships make no sense. They wear out the front runners, expose key players to injury, and undermine the incentive to win the regular season. The NCAA tournament is the pot of golf. No one is going to remember a win or a loss in the conference championship if you go deep in the NCAA.
posted by birdwatcher at 3:01 PM on March 13

Pot of golf? I meant pot of gold.
posted by birdwatcher at 4:49 PM on March 13

It's all about the money generated for the conference/schools (at least some of the money is divvied amongst all the schools in the conference).

They wear out the front runners, expose key players to injury, and undermine the incentive to win the regular season.

The "wearing out" part of that sentence isn't entirely true. Schools are limited to how many games they can play in a season. The regular seasons of most schools were shortened to allow them to play the games in the conference tournament.
posted by hootch at 5:29 PM on March 13

There is also some history involved. Until the late 70s or early 80s, each conference got one and only one team in the NCAA tourney, which then only had 16 slots. This meant that, for example, of #1 North Carolina and #2 Duke, whichever won the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament was the only one that could compete for the national title. Of course, since the NCAA's expanded to 32, 48 and 64, that rationale doesn't exist, but the tradition (not to say intertia) does.
And as a fan of Georgia basketball, I am very very glad that the conference tournament automatic bid system exists.
posted by Dr. Grue at 6:12 PM on March 13

Dr. Grue and LionIndex's second answer above come closest to answering the intent of your questions, as I read them. It's also important to mention that, for many of these conferences, "regular season champs" isn't recorded -- it has no meaning whatsoever. In the ACC, for one example, the official conference champion is the winner of the tournament. Period.

So the extent to which your question even makes sense is precisely the extent to which you care about the college basketball history/record books, other than who gets into and who wins the NCAA tournament every year.
posted by Shotgun Shakespeare at 9:06 PM on March 13

I should also mention that I was living in Raleigh, NC in 1983, so the automatic-bid system has particular meaning for me....
posted by Shotgun Shakespeare at 9:09 PM on March 13

It's also important to mention that, for many of these conferences, "regular season champs" isn't recorded -- it has no meaning whatsoever.

Hate to be so picky here, but conference records are used to seed the conference tourneys. So that's some meaning.
posted by carsonb at 10:14 PM on March 13